Radiant Creatures of Destiny Township
by ThePlotMurderers
Summary: Radiant County, Colorado is a dull suburban outpost with nice, unassuming townsfolk. But beneath the surface, a web of intrigue, mystery and danger seethes. All it takes is one misbegotten act of adolescent love to shake the balance, and set events in motion that will change the citizens of this humble place, forever. Small Town AU/Multi Ship/Almost Every Character
1. Crossroads to Destiny

_Radiant Creatures_

 **A/N:** Welcome! This is my first actual KH fic, though I've been toying with doing something KH related ever since I joined this site. It's an AU, with the KH cast transplanted to a small American suburb. Think of it as _KH_ meets _Twin Peaks_ meets _The Young and the Restless._

Enjoy and love it, hate it, indifferent or confused, please review! I crave validation.

* * *

Chapter 1, Crossroads to Destiny

If you have ever before traveled in the salt flats of Colorado, you would know that there is a dry and dusty stretch of highway that crosses the desert, and goes into the Rockies. What you may not know, is that there is a lonely stretch of road off that highway, a road that twines northwest, up, down and into the mountains.

What you definitely do not know is that at the end of _that_ road is a small mountain lake, watered by runoff from the higher peaks, but too inconsequential to ever be given a name.

Just north of that lake, in a small patch of arable land surrounded by mountains on one end and desert on the other, you would find Destiny. Or rather, Destiny Township, Radiant County, CO, neighbor of other such Townships as Twilight, Traverse and Departure.

As the name might suggest, Radiant County and its associated communities were built on idealism. I don't know when it was built, but it was sometime between the Day the Music Died and The Summer of Love.

But time doesn't mean very much to this story, and it doesn't mean very much to the residents of Radiant County. These people mind their own business, and don't think much of gossip, or of the wider world outside. Indeed, you might suggest (and I may agree with you) that Radiant was a world all its own.

I can't tell you what fantastic sights there were to see in Radiant, because there weren't many. For a spotting point in the Rockies, it certainly doesn't offer as much as Aspen, and thus tourists are diverted from it. The people don't mind, not at all. They like their privacy, and they like their way of life. So why change it?

Well, this is a story about how change came to Radiant, and how everybody's lives were most inconvenienced as a result. I don't know when it happened, but it's probably best to cast a ballpark of around 30 years on it. Like I said, time is funny over there.

Now, there just so happened to be a high school in Destiny. I promise, we won't be spending too much time there, but you'd be surprised how much of this story revolves around the antics of a few rowdy teenagers.

Or maybe you wouldn't be.

* * *

It was 23 degrees outside, and Sora was sweating to death. The world was small and intimate between the slits of his helmet, the cries of the crowd, of his teammates, of his opponents seeming both loud as a storm and distant as some avalanche miles away.

A distant thudding sound in his heart, in the ground under his feet, grew to consume everything else. There was nothing but that noise, the solid mass in his hands, feeling cold and warm at once, and the imminently approaching line on the horizon, the late afternoon sun streaming down on it like some heavensent beacon.

Sora sensed somebody on his flank, couldn't keep back a buoyant laugh as he felt them reach out for air, stumbling cursing.

He was the wind today, and nothing could slow him down.

Another presence behind him, gaining, a shadow on his right, barely any space on his left. Sora gritted his teeth, smiled without realizing he was smiling, and crossed (some would later say it looked more like skipping, but history was written by the victors) over the line, sinking onto his knees in the turf.

The world erupted, the ground shaking with applause and cheers. Sora realized he was laughing, jumping up and down, cradling the ball in his hands as though it were his only child.

"Somebody give this kid the Heisman; he's won Monday Night Practice."

There was an unpleasant feeling of suction as Sora's helmet was tugged off, his hair falling into his eyes, thick brown locks dripping with sweat. It took him a few moments to remember just where he was, and what was going on.

Tidus was smiling that cocksure grin of his, which meant he was both proud and pissed. Sora attributed the latter to the fact that he must have limped the rest of the way to the end zone from the 20-yard line.

"Oh…" Sora laughed sheepishly, running his fingers though his hair, "Um, sorry, Ti, I guess I got carried away."

Tidus rolled his eyes, but nodded toward their teammates coming along the field at their own pace, "No problem. Try that move out on Twilight's cornerback and we've got the game in the bag."

He rolled his shoulders, as if assessing just how severely Sora had crippled him. Apparently, and thankfully so, not that much.

By now the others were gathered around, looking from Sora to Tidus with mixed apprehension and incredulity. Tidus, however, waved his hand at them and they let out a collective sigh of relief, seeing that it was good.

It was high fives and affirmations the whole way back to the locker room. Sora blushed a little under all the praise, but he had long ago learned to like it. He was good at football, he was fast, he won games. He had a talent, and Sora had heard talents were things one should be proud of.

"Like the wind, man! I swear, I could barely see you the whole last play…"

"Yeah, 'cause you were lying in the mud the whole time."

Sora turned to his two good-naturedly bickering teammates, and smiled to say something, but all he could really muster was something like, "Thanks, you guys too."

He still wasn't sure what that meant, but it had become almost a default response to a compliment. It seemed undone not to compliment people who had complimented you first, but Sora had never quite gotten the hang of how it was done.

He caught his own reflection in the tiles of the shower, and grinned at it.

"Keep on running, kid," he whispered to it, putting on his huskiest Vince Lombardi accent, "you're goin' places!"

"Yeah, to the E.R. for an emergency ego-neutering," Tidus came up beside him, dirty blond hair tied into a knot, and a towel tastefully tied around his waist, "You'd better keep that in check, man. _I'm_ supposed to be the cocky bastard."

"You are," replied Sora, "Aren't I allowed to be happy about my skills?"

"Few as they are."

Sora aimed a perhaps very sissy swish of his towel at him. Tidus mocked a girlish yelp and rolled his eyes.

Sora lowered his eyes, keeping back a laugh, "I'm not…I'm not _really_ cocky, am I? Like…people don't think I'm some sorta arrogant…"

"Nah," said Tidus shaking his head, "Nobody thinks you're _that_ , not as long as I'm here. Hell, man, if anything, people are _jealous_ of you."

Sora raised his eyebrows, cocking his head at Tidus as if he'd just told a really stupid and really lame joke.

"…jealous? Since when were people _jealous_ of me?"

Tidus rolled his eyes and scoffed in the world-weary manner of somebody who knows every last detail about how the world works and can't believe nobody else is up to speed yet.

"Here's a riddle for ya, Sora. What do you call somebody who's led the team to their first unbeaten season in years, who gets along with goddamn everybody, who's dating the hottest girl in school…"

"Hey!" cut in Sora, offended.

Tidus ignored him, "…and by some miracle has hair that keeps its shape in a football helmet?" He indicated his own tangled locks with derision, "Well?"

Sora sighed, feeling a reassuring warmth climb into his cheeks. Smiling perhaps rather dorkishly, he admitted, "Fine, I guess you're right. I'm lucky." feeling worried, he added, " _You're_ not jealous, are you?"

Tidus rolled his eyes, shaking his head, "Me? Come on, man, I never said you were _that_ great."

Sora slapped him with the towel again, a little less girlishly, though he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he was happier than he'd been in a really long time.

* * *

"He's staring at you, again."

"Maybe if you stopped staring at him, he'd stop staring at _us_."

Selphie tossed her hair imperiously, "He isn't staring at _us_ , Kai, he's staring at _you_. Like, really obviously."

She took a generous bite of her apple, licking the juice off her lips, for once not seeming to care about smudging her hot pink glittery lip gloss.

"Believe me, if he was staring at me, I wouldn't pretend he wasn't."

Kairi gave her friend a look, reaching across the picnic table to pick up her Algebra notebook, which she opened with a purposeful effort to glance over her carefully copied formulas and equations to the solitary figure sitting at another table, halfway across the school lawn.

"Kismet." Whispered Selphie with a dramatic flourish.

Kairi wished she had the gumption to tell Selphie to put a sock in it, but Selphie could be so smug when she was right.

He wasn't even pretending _not_ to stare, the way passerby might in the street. Rather, he had his head propped up on one arm, eyebrow cocked in drowsy curiosity. He had bright green eyes, almost like a cat's. Clever and cunning, and yet at the same time, bored.

He wore his hair long, in uneven waves. Silver at the roots, going down to a steely blue at the tips, which brushed just over the turned up collar of a faded military jacket.

Everything about his wardrobe seemed faded, in fact. The worn baggy jeans, more gray than blue, the scuffed combat boots, the gray tee-shirt that may once have been blue, green, or even black.

"His name's Riku," said Selphie, as if from miles away.

"I know what his name is."

"Ooh!"

"He's been in our class since middle school, it doesn't take a private eye to remember..."

Bur Selphie was distracted again, her head tilted in a far more feminine approximation of Riku's, "He's supposed to be really, super, hardcore." She nodded as if to solidify the point, "He has a motorcycle."

"He does _not_ ," said Kairi, putting down her notebook at once, "he walks to school every day."

"Aha! Caught ya." Selphie clapped her hands delightedly, "How would you know that, if you weren't watching him too!"

Kairi considered repeating the point about them all going to school together since the awkward mess of prepubescence, but Selphie was already rattling off.

"And he _does_ have a motorcycle, anyway. He rides with one of those leather jacket gangs. Wakka told me."

"Well, he can stop staring whenever he likes," Kairi conceded, returning her attention to her Algebra homework, "What was that formula for Distribution again?"

"A bunch of letters and squiggly things," Selphie replied automatically, not deterred, "And he's not gonna stop looking at you unless _you_ do something about it."

"And what am I supposed to do?" asked Kairi with a touch of humor, "Sic my boyfriend on him?"

"Whoa, whoa, who do I have to sic?" came a familiar, refreshingly bouncy voice. Kairi felt his hand on her shoulder before she turned around to see him.

Sora, smelling as fresh as the school showers would allow, wearing the baggy shorts and hoodie that he seemed to think worked in all weathers. He had that tired, flushed look about him that Kairi had come to associate with a grueling-but-rewarding game.

"Nobody," replied Kairi, patting a spot next to her on the bench, "Pop a squat, you can help me with Algebra."

Sora gave her one of _those_ looks, his eyes going all droopy and hangdog. Kairi sighed, "Fine, we'll distribute terms together."

"Kinky," and Tidus appeared at the table, sports bag over his shoulder, looking disheveled enough to pass for not having cleaned at all. He sat next to Selphie; Kairi smiled knowingly as her friend practically had a seizure on the spot, her freckles almost vanishing under the flush of her cheeks.

"Well, girls, what's the dirt?" asked Tidus, putting on an air of extremely manufactured interest, but Selphie didn't seem to mind.

"Well, our _Kairi_ is too noble and virginal to say anything…"

"Virginal, is she?" asked Tidus, looking at Sora accusingly.

Kairi and Sora both made similar motions under the table, but Kairi was never quite sure which if their kicks had hit Tidus first.

"Ow! Sorry, sorry…" he grumbled, adjusting himself, "Between the two of you I won't be able to play till college, if I'm lucky. Forget the unbeaten season."

"If you _get_ to college," said Kairi, in the same breath as Sora said, "Unbeaten season's in the bag, anyway."

He turned to her with a grin, and Kairi allowed herself to be fawned over. Times like this, to her, were precious and meant to be remembered. To think, a year ago she never would have believed any of this could have happened to her.

And here Sora was, all smiles and those big blue eyes, and that crazy hair of his. Perfect, in his eternal earnestness, his sincerity, his jokes.

"As I was saying," said Selphie, like a grand dame trying to restore the spotlight to herself, "Kairi's secret admirer has entered Day Six of telling subtlety to jump off a bridge."

If Kairi had been what her Gran called 'a street woman', she would have lunged across the table at once and shoved Selphie's apple down her smiling gob. She never understood why Selphie thought it was fun to stir up gossip and scandals and all that other pointless hemming and hawing. Why make trouble where none existed? Who _wanted_ trouble? It must have been some part of teenage girldom she'd missed out on.

"Secret admirer?" Sora's grin melted off his face in that slow, tragic way of ice cream on a sidewalk. It dawned on Kairi that, of course, he'd never noticed. Guys weren't supposed to, and if Selphie had just kept her damn counsel, it would have stayed that way…

He turned over his shoulder in the direction Selphie was pointing, seeing Riku at his table. It seemed to Kairi that there was no way Riku couldn't tell they were all staring back at him now, but he showed little sign of noticing.

His gaze did falter, briefly, flicking down to the ground before returning to them.

"Isn't he one of those weird biker dudes?" asked Tidus.

"Told you." Said Selphie, looking imperiously at Kairi, who was anyway more focused on Sora. His face contorted into that grimace he only put on when he was trying to be serious, though really it just made him look very pouty. Kairi, however, had never had the heart to tell him that.

"Has he been bothering you, Kai?" he asked softly.

"No, he hasn't," Kairi reassured him, looking pointedly back at Selphie, "It really isn't an issue. No point making a big to-do about it."

"I don't know," said Tidus, "usually if a guy stares at a girl like that…"

"Because _you're_ the best judge of a girl's feelings at this table?" said Kairi. Selphie, who seemed to have no side but that of Chaos, giggled and snapped her fingers for Kairi's benefit.

Sora laughed unsurely, patting Kairi gently on the arm, "Well…if you're sure it's nothing, its nothing. But…um…if this guy…"

"His name's Riku." Added Selphie.

Sora looked at her, and nodded as if he got the message, "If he does anything. You know you can…you can just tell me, and I'll take care of him."

"I haven't a doubt you would," said Kairi, ruffling her fingers through his hair, which smelled vaguely of soap, "But you won't have to."

Sora nodded again and, as if on second thought, gave her a quick kiss on the lips.

"Get a room." Came Tidus's voice from somewhere in the periphery, "Aw son of a…"

Which meant Selphie had probably shut him up. Good; she needed the extra friend points in Kairi's book.

She opened her eyes midway as the kiss drew to a close, just in time to see Sora's face, up-close and personal, a way she never thought she'd be able to see it. Bronze skin and dark hair, outlined against the clean brightness of the autumn afternoon sun. The way he seemed to drown in that comfy red hoodie of his, cozy as a baby in the crib.

She could have admired him forever, but that would be weird, and she didn't want to come off as some kind of creeper…

The thought brought her attention to the spot, just out of the corner of her eye, where that other table was at the end of the lawn.

Riku had gone. Kairi didn't know why, but she breathed a warm sigh of relief.

"What is it?" asked Sora.

"Nothing, she replied, "everything's perfect."

* * *

There was a little thrift shop on the corner of Clark and Kimbell. The cozy _Green Acres_ kind of place with big bay windows and a colorful awning hanging over the sidewalk. There was a charming lamppost on the pavement outside, with a hanging pot of violently colored primroses dangling in the breeze, the faint creaking noise usually the only sound on a quiet November evening.

It was just around the back of this thrift shop that Riku's baby was being held hostage.

Hands in his pockets, Riku took a deep breath for fortitude, and stepped into the narrow alley. It was all he could do not to charge at the silent shape of his bike right away, kick the gear off the front tire, and peel off down the road. But one had to be weary of traps, especially in these sorts of situations.

The way his bike was just standing here, completely unguarded, in the open… Riku wasn't _that_ stupid. He expected people to know that.

His right hand, still in his pocket, coiled around the worn, reassuring leather grip, nestled safely between his billfold and his lighter. Just in case.

On closer examination, the bike wasn't damaged at all. A bit dusty, the carburetor could probably due with a good clean, but what else was new? There was a little piece of paper affixed to the handlebars, tied with what seemed to be Tiger Twine. Classy.

Biting back an acerbic curse, Riku held the card up to the dying light and read the message, scrawled in what must be purposefully hideous block print.

' _JUDGEMENT COMES FROM ABOVE_.'

Before he could fully process just what the hell that meant, a shadow descended over him from the fire escape landing, a lithe, lean figure thudding gracefully onto its feet right behind him.

"Shit!" he swore, almost tripping right over his bike, were it not for the figure stretching out one of its impossibly angular arms to steady him.

"Whoa, take it easy, Sergeant," Axel drawled, sleepily as if he'd just been woken from a midday nap, "I come in peace."

Riku shook his head, pushing Axel's arms off him as he tried to catch his breath, "Really not in the mood for the theatrics today, Ax."

The smile didn't leave Axel's face, but he leaned back as if to show that he was willing to act some modicum of solemn for Riku's sake.

"What, rough day? Look, I know I promised Betty back to you last week…"

"Betty?"

"Yeah, I called her Betty. She makes this sweet little noise when you take her down to 40 on the open road."

"And that noise sounds like 'Betty'?"

Axel smirked, "No, it sounds like this _girl_ Betty from back in junior year, way before your time, but you shoulda seen…"

"Yeah, that's great, forgive me if I haven't been moved to tears, it's been a shitty day."

"Dammit, Riku, every day is shitty for you," Axel went digging around in the pockets of his impossibly tight jeans (Riku wasn't sure how he could keep anything in those pockets without being overcome by imbalance) and dug out Betty's keys. Well, not Betty. Riku didn't think he could come to terms with riding around on one of Axel's many teenaged conquests.

"I keep tellin' ya to add some fiber to that diet, man, it'll help."

"Did not need to hear that," said Riku flatly, taking the keys from Axel's outstretched hand and starting the task of kicking down the shift to get on the move. Axel, however, had crossed his arms and was now standing in the middle of the alley, as if to prevent any escape before it could happen.

"Look, what if you go out with us tonight? Me and the guys are going up the lakeside: Overlook. We'll have the works: music, fireworks, _refreshments_ …" he gave Riku a playful shake by the shoulder, "C'mon, I've even talked Seifer into bringing his new roadster. We could have a go on it, see if it was worth his money."

Though Riku was tempted to know just how Axel had threatened their erstwhile friend (well, not quite 'friend'; the social hierarchy operated a bit differently among suburban biker gangs) he still was determined to come out of this mess with _some_ of his dignity intact.

"I don't think I'll be much fun tonight, believe me."

"Fine, be that weird guy in the corner. Just show up, it'll do you some good, and the guys will all get a laugh out of it."

Axel laughed, not necessarily a cruel one, but the boisterous, eager one he only used when he really wanted something.

"Come on, man… If you won't do it for the guys, or for yourself, or for Seifer's thousand-dollar alleged speed machine, do it for me." He pouted, the red teardrop tattoos under his eyes crinkling into compact trapezoids, "I need a straight man to balance me out, or else they're all gonna get sick of how wicked badass and funny I am."

Riku sighed, lightly brushing Axel's hand off his shoulder (how he hated having to look up at him all the time), and he smiled despite himself, "Fine, I'll go. On one condition."

"Oh?" Axel brightened at once, "Do tell."

"Never say 'wicked' again. Please."

There was a short pause before Axel threw back his head, his mane of scarlet hair catching the sunset as he did so, laughing like a hyena even though Riku wasn't sure he'd even been that funny. He meant it. Nobody said 'wicked'; it was the definition of trying too hard.

But, maybe that whole 'trying too hard' aesthetic was just what drew him to Axel in the first place.

"Deal," said Axel, between short bursts of laughter, "I'll go round by the shop, pick up my ol' piece of junk, you can take Betty."

"Permission to use my property," said Riku drily, "I'm honored."

"Damn straight," Axel paused, as if debating whether or not to say what he was about to say.

"Do I get to know just why you've been sulking like a girl for the last week, or…"

Riku gave him a thud on the back of the head, and Axel desisted, chuckling, "Fine, fine, I won't push my luck. See you tonight, my brother. Be there or be square."

He pointed his fingers at Riku, in the shadow-puppet shape of a pistol, blowing off a round right between the eyes, "You'll catch it if you're not."

"Don't worry about that. I know better than to catch things from you."

"Good man." And Axel headed out of the alley and around the corner, laughing at some joke only he could understand.

Riku hefted himself up onto his bike, pushing his hair out of his eyes so he could look directly out the mouth of the alley, into the setting sun.

Letting out another deep sigh, he revved Betty up and set off down Kimbell Street feeling, if not better, than at least not entirely shitty. If he had to put up with Axel's 'wickedness' tonight, then so be it.

Maybe it _would_ do him some good.

* * *

 **A/N:** So, again, I hope you liked it! I certainly had a fun time writing it.

Updates for this story will ostensibly be on a weekly basis that I will try my damnedest to keep track of. So, by that rule, look out for Chapter 2 on this coming Monday August 1st! If it doesn't show up, you have full permission to call me out.


	2. Roadblocks to Fate

Chapter 2, Roadblocks to Fate

* * *

 **A/N:** I know, I know, I said updates would occur every Monday. I've rethought that concept. Friday's a little easier, and more in line with my traditional update schedule from yonks ago, when I wrote _A Series of Unfortunate Events_ fanfic of dubious quality.

I also felt tht Chapter 1 didn't really have as much 'stuff' in it, as it's basically just introducing our principle characters. This one has a bit more content, so...enjoy!

* * *

Sora woke up to the sounds of Laura Nyro, the dishwasher, and a cat in heat. Familiar, comforting noises of home.

"Honey, you have ten minutes to get up and dressed before I come up there and do it for you!"

"M'wake, Ma…" Sora muttered, turning over in bed.

She wouldn't actually come in here and dress him, she had too much self-respect for that. Sora believed the intended effect was to make him feel guilty for putting her to extra work, but the warning was really more like the Snooze button on his biological alarm clock.

He was asleep for maybe four minutes more, enveloped in a very vivid dream about playing football naked for an audience of pirates. It was one of those weird dreams that could have been either funny or terrifying, but was all the more memorable because of it.

Finally, he felt a wet nuzzling at his face, an insistent meowing, like a warning that he was _really_ gonna get it if he didn't get his ass out of here in a New York minute.

"Fine, fine… Jeez, Marie." He groaned, rolling out of bed and catching himself on his dresser for balance.

The white cat purred contently and, her task for the day fulfilled, darted out the door.

Aware that the division game against Twilight was in T-minus 48 hours, Sora attempted a few squats in the mirror for good luck, but cramped up before he got to a dozen, probably his body telling him to stop stalling.

He never _was_ really awake until lunchtime, anyway, and nothing he could do would change that.

The record player sat on the kitchen counter, precariously perched as ever between the toaster and the coffee pot, the sultry rasp of Nyro's voice echoing in their little apartment, plaintively moaning about love and miracles.

His Mom was leaning against the counter, bobbing her head up and down to the music as she read through the daily paper (some story about a missing soup kitchen volunteer, from what Sora could see of the headline) with a vague interest.

In her free hand she held a cup of strong tea, steaming like a deep sea vent, taking a sip from it every two minutes or so. In all other respects, she was still as a statue.

Sometimes Sora wondered how they could be related.

"Morning, Ma!" he beamed, collapsing into his chair at the kitchen table.

She looked up from the paper, eyes keen behind her thin-framed reading glasses, "School starts in thirty minutes," she said quite matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." He took a piece of toast from the dish in the middle of the table and crunched it noisily.

They looked at each other for a while. Sora thought he may have broken eye contact first, but his mother was the first to smile, however faintly, "If you _really_ want to pretend school is the end zone, at least look both ways before crossing the street. And take some food with you, I know for a fact you never eat lunch."

She tossed him a paper bag which Sora supposed contained one of her mediocre but very Mommish ham sandwiches. Sora got to his feet, collecting his book bag from the corner near the door, "I need all the practice I can get. Game's…"

"In two days, I know. I'm more likely to forget my own birthday."

"Which is in two months!" Sora said proudly, just in case she thought he'd forgotten.

"One and a half."

"Gotcha." He was already halfway out of the apartment, lucky not to have tripped and brained himself on the threshold.

"Have a good day!" she called after him.

"You too!" he replied, already flying down the stairs, the whole world ahead of him.

* * *

The comforting, warm confines of sleep were shattered in an instant by a rough shake and a husky voice, sounding less like he'd just woken up and more like he'd already had half a pack of cigs this morning, "Yo! Yo, Riku… Rise and shine, buddy…"

The response came to Riku before he could properly remember what had happened last night, "Are you drunk?"

"Not drunk," slurred Axel, and Riku opened his eyes enough to make out the wild red halo currently blocking the dawn from breaking, "Hungover."

Riku sat up sluggishly, putting a hand to his head, which felt like an indie band had been using it for bongos, "What time is it?"

"Tuesday,"

"Thanks," Riku rolled his eyes, tired but not quite crabby, getting slowly to his feet. There really was something beautiful about spending the night out in the open, under the stars. Sure you were a little sore from the rocks and pebbles under you, but the feel of the crisp breeze off the lake, the freeing _openness_ of the world around you, was worth it.

And the Overlook was a pretty sweet spot, all things considered. A rocky incline, tucked out of view from the main docks and houses on the lakeshore, but open enough to allow for a perfect view of the lake and the desert to the distant south of it. Now, with dawn breaking over the mountains, the whole place was tinted in pastels. Pink and purple and light blue.

Of course, the whole place stank of booze, tobacco and burnt rubber, which sort of killed the illusion, but it was still pretty to look at.

"Where is everybody?" asked Riku, stretching to get the kinks out of his muscles.

"Seifer bailed, remember?" said Axel, coming up beside him, perhaps dangerously close to the precipice. Luckily for him, though, Riku would end up taking the worst of the fall if they pitched over the edge.

Still, he nudged Axel back from the brink just in case.

"Betty showed up that trillion-dollar tin pot of his, I'll tell ya that." Axel wiped a possibly imaginary tear from his eye, "For the history books!"

"So…we've been alone, all night?" asked Riku, looking up and down the lonely bluff. The telltale signs of partying remained, of course. Cigarette stubs, tire tracks in the earth, bits of glass and empty bottles. Not to mention the aforementioned smell, but as far as Riku surmised, he and Axel were the only ones left.

"Nah, a few others were clearing out just when I was comin' around." He yawned loudly, shaking his hair out like a wet dog, "Starving. Wanna get some Denny's?"

"I can't go to Denny's, Ax, I've got school," Riku's eyes widened, and he repeated, more fatalistically, "Shit. I've got school."

He rolled back the sleeve of his jacket to check his watch. 8:10.

"I've got twenty minutes!"

"Just cut class, man, it's not the end of the world."

"I can't cut class!" said Riku, noting a rather annoying squeak that slipped into his voice on the last syllable, "Look, I've gotta get outta here, I…"

"Behold, a sight for the ages!" proclaimed Axel, spreading his arms wide over the lake, "The biker with the immaculate attendance record!"

But Riku was already running to where he remembered his bike had been parked. No sooner had he descended the crude stone staircase to the little clearing they'd used as a parking lot, did Riku notice something most singularly upsetting.

"Where's my bike?"

"Huh?" asked Axel, half trotting/half falling down the steps to join him. His face gained a few sobriety points, however, when he followed Riku's gaze, "Oooh…shit." He snapped his fingers as if in recollection, "Oh yeah. I…I forgot."

"Forgot _what_?" Riku prompted, feeling a cold clenching feeling in his gut, "Axel, what the hell happened?"

For once, Axel looked downcast, wringing his hands like a nervous housemaid, his face tinged a ruddy pink, either from the booze, the cold, embarrassment, or more likely all three, "Last night…after you…er…you know, after you passed out."

"I fell asleep."

Axel shrugged, "You know that rule about the first guy who passes out at a party?"

"Yeah, at a _slumber_ party. What, did you auction my bike off, or something?"

" _I_ didn't!" said Axel, "Seifer did. You're welcome to pick up the keys to his racer whenever you like."

With a massive groan of frustration, Riku crossed to Axel in two strides, and raised a fist. He probably could have left a pretty good mark, too, right on the jawline which Axel was so proud of, if Axel hadn't said, "Whoa, whoa, man… Okay, I admit it, I was flat wasted last night. I'll make it up to you. Promise. You know Seifer's really scared shitless of me, right?"

Riku sighed, lowering his fist, "Fine. I'll beat you up later."

Axel sighed tremendously, "I can live with that." He nodded toward his own ride, a fusty red Corvette convertible (his bike had been in and out of the shop for the last three weeks, and whatever Axel seemed to think, it would be that way for a while) at the end of the lot, "I'll give you a ride. Count it as a make-up gift."

Riku considered, looking again at his watch (fourteen minutes, now), and sighed, "It's a start.", already moving toward the convertible.

Axel seemed to liven up considerably once they were on the road. He drove like a maniac, taking the turns in the narrow mountain road far more sharply than should probably be considered advisable, but there were almost no other cars on the road at this hour anyway.

"So Denny's…" he prompted about two minutes into the drive, "A go?"

"No."

"Never knew you to be so picky about your attendance record," Axel remarked drily. Riku gave him a piercing look, and he deflated somewhat.

"Okay, fine. I'm sorry. I should never have convinced you to come last night. Happy?"

"No," Riku allowed for a small smile, though, "I'm glad I came. It's not your fault Seifer's a dick."

That seemed to cheer Axel up even more, "We agree on one thing, then."

He turned on the radio, putting on some blaring Alt. rock station that played music Riku may have liked if his head wasn't still pounding like a metronome.

Which reminded him, "You're drunk."

"Hungover."

"No, Ax, you're driving drunk."

"Jesus, first you're bitching about getting to school on time, now you're giving me drunk driving PSAs."

Presumably seeing Riku was unsatisfied, Axel said, "Open the glove compartment."

Reluctantly, Riku complied, muffling a curse at the barrage of paper, plastic, and assorted detritus that fell into his lap.

Holding up a square of foil (one of a few dozen), Riku eyed Axel wearily, "What's with all the condoms?"

"What, ever hear of _feng shui_?" explained Axel without even looking, "Good vibrations."

Riku wasn't sure he wanted to know what that meant, so he let the square fall in among its brothers on the floor.

"There oughta be a little spray bottle somewhere in that," Axel continued, "green and white…"

"'Hangover recovery spray'?" Riku read the label of the eponymous bottle he'd discovered beneath a Chinese takeout menu and a half-finished crossword puzzle from four Julys ago.

"Don't knock it till you've tried it. Works miracles, better than coffee." He opened his mouth, baring his white, fang-like teeth in a wolfish grin, "Go ahead, give it a spritz."

"Shouldn't you just do it yourself?"

"Sure, if you want me to pull over so you can be late…"

Noticing that they were by now only two blocks from Destiny High, and figuring he had nothing to lose after how spectacularly his morning was going so far, Riku conceded his defeat and sprayed a shot of the fruity, tangy stuff down Axel's open mouth.

It was the worst thing he could have done. Axel, clearly all bluster, began to choke like a chicken, convulsing wildly in the driver's seat.

"Oh my God!" cried Riku, lunging forward in his seat to grab onto his friend, at the same time trying to recall how to do the Heimlich. He should have also tried to recall how to put a car in brake, but it's often so difficult to think of things under pressure like that.

As a result, neither he nor Axel were quite aware of the curb coming up on their right, or of the hapless pedestrian running without abandon right into their path.

Axel, however, seemed well enough to hack an eloquent, "Motherfucker," after the fact, so the situation could have been worse.

* * *

Mr. Thatch really, really wanted them to know how awesome Skara Brae was. Pity for him that teenagers were preconditioned to find this subject heinously boring under pain of being labeled a history nerd.

Kairi felt bad that she couldn't muster up as much interest as Selphie sitting next to her, though she was pretty confident Selphie's staring was motivated only by the academic impulse to sketch a topographical map of Mr. Thatch's tweed-clad buttocks.

"So we have here a greater concentration of the slag-like compound known as 'Kelp', though I have heard it called 'Cramp'." Mr. Thatch turned from the board smiling one of his toothy 'I'm the cool teacher, please love me,' grins, "Affectionately, of course."

Selphie giggled but the reaction went no farther than that.

Mr. Thatcher seemed to take that as an encouragement, and continued, "Now, Vere Gordon Child suggested that…"

A thud on the back of Kairi's neck. She may have reacted more exorbitantly were it not for the fact that she was used to it. Sighing aggrievedly, she stuck her hand down the back of her blouse and managed to salvage the crumpled up piece of loose leaf paper before it reached her bra strap.

She wondered, idly, if such an action would have been grounds for sexual harassment. Kairi had it on good authority that she didn't have to take that.

Tidus, in the desk behind her, gave her a thumbs-up and pointed insistently at the paper, eyebrows raised.

Looking up once to make sure Thatch was still immersed in his blocky floorplans of Houses 1-8, Kairi spread the note out on her desk and read, in Tidus's lazy pencil, ' _What have you done to my running back?_ ', accompanied by a crudely doodled heart and a splotchy mark which may have been a smiling pineapple or, perhaps, Sora's head.

Kairi turned the paper over onto its opposite side and wrote, taking great care to use her best cursive, just to show Tidus up, ' _Nothing. XOXO._ '

Pondering her best course of action, Kairi gave in to temptation and added a quick approximation of Sora's face. His eyes may have been too big, but artistic license was in full effect.

Luckily, an upsurge of sirens passing in the street outside was enough to distract her peers as she tossed the note back whence it came. Well, except Selphie, whose senses were attuned to pick up on school shenanigans.

She gave Kairi a very put-upon look as Tidus caught the note as only a wide receiver can do. Kairi only assumed Selphie was feeling jealous, which was stupid for so many reasons Kairi couldn't settle on just one.

"Now, House 8 has a remarkably constructed flue, which we can safely assume means…"

Tidus groaned audibly, having unfurled the paper to ready her response.

"Question, Tidus?" Thatch turned from the board, Nutty Professor glasses wobbling on the bridge of his nose, "Or are you just delighted beyond speech at the innovation of grooved pottery?"

Tidus reddened, but mustered up a grin anyway, "Oh, definitely, Mr. T. Those grooves just drive me _wild_ , man, you wouldn't…"

Bless him, Thatch never seemed to know what to do with Tidus. He opened his mouth to say something, but shook his head, smiling benignly, sort of like Sora did sometimes, when Tidus had talked _him_ into submission.

And, though she may have brushed it off in her note back to Tidus, Kairi couldn't help but wonder about the empty desk one row back and two spaces to the left, right up against a National Geographic map of Iceland.

It wasn't like Sora to miss class, at least not when there was a big game on the horizon. He hadn't looked sick last night, when he'd walked her home and given her a kiss goodbye, promising he'd study for the Algebra quiz, that he wouldn't let football get in the way of the rest of his life, etc.

As a matter of fact, Kairi wasn't sure she'd ever seen him look better. If Gran hadn't been very unobtrusively watching from the window of her bedroom, Kairi may have extended the kiss a little longer, just to feel Sora against her, warm and strong and firm against the cold wetness of that evening.

But Gran had that amazing senior citizen talent of knowing exactly where and when young people were getting up to 'foolery', as she called it, and Kairi didn't want to make her worry. Still, when she'd gone into the living room after saying goodbye, she could tell from Gran's eyes that she wasn't angry at all.

"Be that as it may," continued Thatch, returning to the board, "if we could return to the Orkney Islands and the Ring of Brodgar, legendary bastion of wise men and healers…"

A piercing _screech_ of tires on asphalt, another blare of sirens, as an ambulance ripped right by the window, shortly followed by two police cars and a straggling crowd of pedestrians. The commotion was enough to bring the attention of the whole class to the windows. Selphie, quick as a shot, was first to lean against the windowsill, nose practically pressed against the glass.

Her expectant grin melted at once, "Oh my God!"

A chorus of ' _whats?_ ' and ' _Holy shits!_ ' and the like rippled through the crowd, depending entirely on where the speaker was standing. Kairi, pushed her way through the press of figures to where Selphie and Tidus were. There was a cold, clammy feeling under her skin, that sort you get when you know very well that something very bad has happened, even if you don't know what it is or why.

"Now, now, what's all this…" Thatch was sandwiched between two people in the back, his glasses hanging off one ear, but he saw what the rest were seeing, and the air seemed to go out of him in a wavering hiss, "Oh, jiminy crickets."

Kairi put a hand up against the glass of the window, craning her neck the best she could to see the EMTs rushing up the sidewalk toward the ambulance, bearing a figure between them on the stretcher.

"No way." whispered Tidus next to her, his voice low and husky, "That's not…"

But Kairi had already pushed past him, nearly knocking Thatch over in her haste. Thatch called after her, but she had no idea what he was saying. All she could think of was that ambulance, that stretcher, and the prone, still form of Sora lying there like a broken doll.

* * *

There were 25 tiles on the ceiling over the bed. The patterns on the faded blue curtain partition looked sometimes like shoelaces and sometimes like uncoiled barbed wire. The air smelled like hand sanitizer and latex.

Sora wished he knew what time it was, but he was forbidden from sitting up to look at his watch.

"I feel fine," he'd told the triage nurse about twenty minutes ago, "Promise."

"You say that now," she'd replied knowingly, "That's shock. Broken bones or not, you'll be feeling hella sore before too long."

And it wasn't like he was feeling _perfect,_ or anything. His leg was throbbing steadily, a slow burning coming up his thigh. The skin of his palms was red and raw where they'd hit the sidewalk. Not to mention that his ears were still ringing and his breath was a little uneven, but he _had_ almost been hit by a car, so that was to be expected.

Still, no reason to make a fuss. He'd been hurt worse. For a moment he imagined Tidus would call that kind of thinking cocky and arrogant, but it seemed true enough to Sora.

"Where is he?" demanded a ringing, commanding voice, drowning out whichever most-likely-terrified hospital employee she was talking to, "I _am_ family dammit, I'm his _Mother_."

Instinctively Sora sat up in bed, hands folded politely in front of him. He felt a little sore doing that, but he refused to take that as evidence against him.

The curtains were thrown aside, and his Mom appeared at his bedside, shadowed by a harried nurse. He could tell at once she'd come directly from washing up without looking back. Her hair was still wet, held loosely in place with elastic bands, and she hadn't even bothered with makeup.

She was wearing sweatpants and a wool jacket that really didn't go together at all, and if Sora hadn't known better he'd have guessed she ran all the way from home, the way she was panting.

"Hi Mom." Said Sora, waving limply.

"Oh, Sora, sweetheart…" and she flung her arms around him with such force he almost fell out of the bed.

"Er…ma'am…" began the nurse.

"Aren't I allowed to hug my son?" Mom turned back to the nurse with such fire in her eyes that she backed off at once. Sora felt a surge of pride and affection, and hugged her back.

When he pulled away, he was surprised to see that her eyes were wet.

"Aw, don't cry, Ma. Please? If it makes you feel better, I _did_ look both ways."

She shook her head, smiling as she yanked a Kleenex from a nearby box to dab at her eyes, "You know, I really wish you would just take things _seriously_ every once in a while. From what I heard you could have been killed…"

"Mom, I'm fine. Just 'in shock', that's what they said."

"Is that true?" she turned to the nurse. Sora couldn't help but be offended at the implication, but he knew enough about his Mom that she wouldn't feel right about this if she really _did_ have nothing to worry about.

"Partly. We're waiting on his X-ray results, but if there's anything wrong, it isn't too bad."

"See?" Sora looked up at his Mom, smiling softly to assuage her fears, "It's all gonna be okay."

She bit her lip, nodding as if to say she believed him, but Sora knew her well enough to know it would never, really, be okay with her. But she'd say it was anyway, because she didn't want him to worry.

"I'd better let your friends in," she said, straightening up, "They've been standing vigil in the waiting room since before I got here."

"My friends?" Sora's eyes went uncertainly up to meet hers, "Do they…do they _really_ have to come in? I mean…I'm fine, and…"

"Sora, you almost died this morning…"

"I'm just in _shock_!" he repeated.

"Your friends knew all about this before I did, and they dropped everything they were doing to be here for you, so you could at least do them the courtesy of seeing how 'okay' you are."

"But…" Sora picked feebly at the gauze bandages around his head and hands, already imagining the ways Tidus would joke about them. But he supposed his Mom had a point.

"Fine." He sighed.

The nurse apparently had some caveat about letting too many people in to see patients at a time, so Mom was made to wait outside as two frantic teenagers (due to their age, the nurse might have counted them as one adult; how generous) dashed into the E.R.

"Oh my God, Sora!" Kairi was down beside the bed at once, a careful hand going out to his shoulder, as if afraid she would break him if she applied too much pressure, "We heard all about the car crash, everybody was saying you were dead…"

"Crash?" repeated Sora, blinking, "It, like, bumped up on the curb. I sorta…I sorta jumped out of the way before it could hit me."

"Atta boy," said Tidus approvingly, "Like the wind, Sora, always."

Sora supposed it _had_ been pretty badass, if only he'd been able to see it from across the street, or on Instant Replay, instead of actually _been_ the one doing it. Still, nobody could ever accuse his football career of being pointless now.

"You guys really thought I was dead?" asked Sora, looking first at Kairi, who shook her head sheepishly.

"Well, we didn't really get to _see_ much. Just the ambulance and…and you, in the stretcher."

"Selphie almost had a stroke, I swear to god," said Tidus, "Wakka had to drive her home, it wasn't pretty."

"And…well, you know how the rumor mill is." Kairi adapted that delicate tone she so often used when she was about to say something she knew would just upset everything. As much as she seemed to loathe girlish stereotypes, she was probably one of the most ladylike girls Sora knew.

"And who was _driving_ the car," added Tidus darkly.

"Who?"

"What, you don't know?" asked Tidus.

"No, Ti, I was too busy trying not to get run over by the thing. Who was it? I've never seen that 'Vette before…"

"Tidus, maybe this isn't the right place," began Kairi.

"…The guy has a right to know, he was almost _killed_!"

"It was an _accident_!"

"So he says!"

Kairi opened her mouth, looking scandalized. Sora felt a little prickle of goosebumps up and down his neck. He hadn't really considered someone had been _trying_ to hit him, mostly because who _does_ think that? Hit and runs were best left for Dateline investigations and cop shows.

"Guys," Sora repeated, "you can tell me. Who was driving the…"

"X-rays are in," said the nurse, returning from wherever it was she had gone, holding in her hands a manila envelope and a typed transcript.

"We were kind of in the middle of something." Said Tidus.

The nurse raised her eyebrows at him, and he desisted, grumbling. Mom emerged now, having apparently been watching all this from a safe distance. First smiling beneficently at Kairi, she addressed the nurse, "How bad is it?"

The nurse smiled one of those tired, but kind smiles that so often appeared on the faces of hospital workers, the kind that meant they were as glad as you.

"Not bad at all. No broken bones, no sprains. All this one needs is a few days bedrest, he'll be good as new."

"Oh, that's wonderful!" she took the transcript from the nurse's hands, (Sora knew the most dangerous part of this experience would be finding out how much of this whole thing was covered by the insurance) turning to look at Sora with a grateful smile.

Sora didn't realize at first she was looking at him. His attention here was more focused on Tidus, who had gone quite pale and still, eyes wide as though traumatized. Sora thought he must look quite the same way.

"Bed rest?" he repeated, with soft terror, the way he might also say 'chemical castration', had he ever the need.

"Count yourself, lucky," said the nurse, but his Mom seemed at last to realize what was bothering him so much.

"Oh honey…your football game."

"Football game," echoed Tidus, "division game. First unbeaten season in seventeen years."

"Tidus!" said Kairi, looking back at Sora, "Sora, the important thing is that you're alright. You were hit by a car! I mean…it could have been much worse…"

Sora couldn't really reply to that; he wasn't sure he could make words form at all. It felt, somehow, like he was drying up from the inside. His throat was suddenly constricted and scratchy, his heart beating erratically. He gripped the armrests on his bed, feeling a sharp sting from his bandaged hands, but didn't really care.

At last, (it was probably only a minute or two, but felt like hours) Sora found some words, "Who was driving the car?" asked in a raspy whisper he didn't even know he was capable of.

His mother looked at Kairi, who averted her eyes and looked at Tidus. Sora wasn't certain how much any of them knew or were willing to tell.

"Sora," his Mom said, "it was just an accident…"

"There's no point going on some vendetta, Sora…" said Kairi.

"It was that biker asshole," said Tidus, sounding like he'd gladly go on a vendetta himself, "Riku."

Sora was discharged from the care of the hospital less than a half hour later. His Mom suggested they pick up something from his favorite deli as they drove home, but Sora didn't have the will to respond. They went to the deli anyway, ordered two warm pepper-and-cheese heroes.

His Mom ran her free hand through his hair as they drove back home. He wasn't sure at what point she started singing, but she did eventually, softly and comfortingly, the way she had since he was a boy.

" _The other night dear, as I lay sleeping_ …"

Riku… That voiceless interloper, sitting and watching, casually staring out of half-interested eyes. Staring at Kairi, who said it was nothing. Sora had said it was nothing too.

" _I dreamed I held you in my arms. But when I woke dear, I was mistaken…_ "

But Kairi was always ready to quell any fuss before it could be made. Sora liked that about her; it made her less complicated than other girls he knew. She didn't waste time making drama. For once, though, Sora wished he hadn't listened to her.

" _So I hung my head and cried._ "

Sora took a bite of his sandwich, trying to muster up a smile for his mother, to let him know he really _was_ thankful, really. But he couldn't muster up a smile.

" _You are my sunshine. My only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you_."

He wasn't aware that he was crying, but she seemed to know, she always did. But she may have learned enough from today's adventures to keep her eyes on the road as long as she could. Still, she squeezed his shoulder with her free hand, and smiled for the both of them.

" _Please don't take my sunshine away._ "

* * *

 **A/N** : This was a fun one to write. Sora's mother is about the closest thing to an OC this story will have, mostly since everything about her is left up to the imagination by default. I know there are a lot of versions of her, so she is by no means the first attempt, but whether she's tolerable, excellent or horrendous is entirely up to you.

Next chapter will be up on Friday August 5th. That date is valid this time.

Until then!


	3. The Tipping Point

Chapter 3, The Tipping Point

 **A/N:** So this Chapter breaks my own self-imposed rule of having four scenes per chapter. There are five in this one, but I figure self-imposed rules are the easiest to break. All other chapter I've planned out so far (and there are several) total up to four.

Also...new POVs this chapter! Because I've sort of modeled this story on a daytime soap opera format, there are going to be several ancillary stories that are connected to the main one. In my current planning, there will be 11 POV characters throughout _Radiant Creatures._ Some, of course, will appear much more than others, but hopefully they're all enjoyable.

And on we go...

* * *

So…on the lifetime record of fuck-ups, this one was definitely in the top five. Okay, maybe top ten. It was somewhere up there.

Sure, Axel had handled his fair-share of adversity at the hands of the American criminal justice system…but that had mostly been things like graffiti (cliché as it may seem, his aerosol rendering of his 6th grade teacher as a flaming phallus with wings remained one of his highest achievements), public intoxication (what was the _point_ of doing it in private, anyway?), and public nudity (he _had_ been wearing a thong, however. Biker gang hazing was a very special kind of hazing).

This instance, as the perky pixie-haired officer on duty informed him, was, "DUI, damage of public property…"

"Oh, come on. That meter hasn't worked since before I was born!"

"Reckless endangerment, and possibly hit-and-run if the kid's family presses charges," she raised her eyes to him and, smiling like a schoolgirl, said, "You _also_ have the right to remain silent, but from all I've heard that ain't happening."

"I'm told I have a nice voice," Axel drawled, not meaning it to sound seductive, but if it did that certainly wouldn't hurt, "Why trap it in chains?"

"For one thing, it'd match the rest of you. You, sir, are being booked."

Axel was tempted to point out she'd just implied they were going to chain him up (which was probably against an Amendment. One of them.), but thought better of it. They had already refused to let him drive home and get changed after he got out of the hospital. Wasted no time, Destiny's finest, not when this case had (purportedly) been the talk of the local news all last night.

He'd heard a snatch of it on the radio as he was being escorted…more like _dragged_ , as he had patriotically told his captors…out of the E.R to the squad car.

' _Witnesses report suspect was under the influence of drugs, resisted arrest, and had another minor in the car._ '

So one of those three things was true. Stellar reporting, somebody ought to give those headline whores at Channel 7 the Pulitzer. They'd all be calling him a junkie kiddie diddler within the week. Seifer wouldn't let him live it down.

Ah well…at least Riku was fine. Probably royally pissed off and ready to never speak with him again, but fine.

The cop flipped through the crisp blue folder, which apparently was Axel's legacy in the annals of criminal history. She adjusted herself where she was sitting on the table, crossing her legs as she flipped through the documents as though she were reading a travel brochure.

"Twenty-one years of age…"

"Young in body, wise in spirit."

"College drop-out…"

"Self-taught on the streets of life."

"What kind of name is Axel?"

"What kind of name is Yuffie?"

She looked up at him, and for a glorious minute Axel was anticipating a police brutality charge, but she laughed instead, a screechy giggle, kicking her legs in the air with such abandon that Axel pushed his chair back, getting a kink in his cuffed arm for his trouble.

"Just as smooth a talker as I was told," she said approvingly, "Now come on, Axelrod, let's get this over with."

"Not the first time I've heard that one."

He wasn't sure whether or not Yuffie appreciated that one, but she took a little more time undoing his handcuff than she probably needed, either to make him suffer in stillness some more, or to get a better look at him up close.

The beautiful tension of the moment was shattered, as it so often is, by the sudden entrance of a second man.

"This one giving you any trouble, Yuffie?" Guy Cop asked flatly, yet somehow smugly, as if he already knew the answer.

"Nope," replied Axel at once, waving with his newly freed hand, "The lady and I were just exchanging origin stories."

"Ooh, yes, it's a real nail-biter." Said Yuffie cheerily, hefting Axel to his feet, " _Behold! A Delinquent is Born_!"

Guy Cop, a solemn-faced detective with the build of a Marine and even less humor gave no indication that he'd heard any of that, and proceeded to flank Axel's other side as they passed out of interrogation and through dispatch to the cell block, a short but tedious journey, made even moreso since every beat cop, desk jockey and crossing guard in the place gave Axel one of _those_ looks, as if he were some dangerous animal going to the slaughter.

Again, only one of those things was correct. He had no intention of going to the chopping block anytime soon.

Aware that Guy Cop was pointedly ignoring him, Axel figured he's break the ice, "It's Leon, right?"

"Squall, actually," said Yuffie, "But he'll never tell you that."

"Embarrassing first name? Sucks, man. Still, smart move being a man of many titles. Yuffie here has dubbed me 'Axelrod', which is what I'll tell all the fellas in the prison yard."

He winked at Squall, forcing him to meet his eye, giving Axel a glimpse of the smoothly curved scar that marred the right side of his face.

"Thought so," said Axel, nodding, "You know Seifer just shits his pants whenever someone tells that story? He's put so many spins on it _he_ can't even keep it…"

The rest of his sentence caught in his throat as Squall nudged him (more like pushed, but whatever) into an open cell, slamming the door behind him before Axel could even turn around.

"Hey, hey, no offense man!" said Axel, sinking down onto the cot, which creaked ominously under even his trim and nimble physique, "Anyone who can make Seifer Almasy cry 'uncle' is cool with me."

In a show of solidarity, Axel extended his fist, vertically, through a slit in the bars of the cell. Leon looked first at the fist, then up at Axel's smiling face, and scowled, the first genuine expression Axel had seen him make.

He lowered his fist at once, sighing in defeat.

"Ooh! He gets a phone call," said Yuffie, as if just remembering.

"He got one," replied Leon, "Nobody answered."

"Squall, it doesn't count as a phone call if nobody picks up."

"S'cool," shrugged Axel, "I wasn't really expecting an answer, anyway; my popularity rating's in a bit of flux at the moment. You know how it is."

"Can't say I do," replied Yuffie, putting a delicate hand on Squall's arm to lead him out of the room, probably before he decided to grab Axel by the hair and drag him up against the bars.

He listened to their receding footsteps all the way out of the corridor, made sure the door had been closed shut behind them, and at last allowed himself to speak freely, "Son of a goddamn bitch on wheels."

He found that the cell was small enough for him to lie on the cot and at the same time press his boots very cozily against the bars of the opposite cell. Axel had the whole place to himself; perfectly quiet, just the right kind of place to stop and think about life.

It wasn't really _his_ fault. Really, this all went back to Seifer getting them all wasted and 'winning' Betty, though Axel could no longer remember just how that had happened. If that hadn't happened, Riku wouldn't have gotten his testes in a twist, Axel wouldn't have had to drive him, and they never would have run up on the sidewalk and almost hit (the imperative word was 'almost'; he'd have to remember that when he acted as his own attorney) Skippy McGee, or whatever the kid's name was.

"Born to be a scapegoat," he mused softly, "A victim of circumstance, a tool of fate…"

"…Destiny's bitch?" came a smooth, silky voice, stuck perpetually between wry humor and good-natured exasperation.

"Huh, that's a good one," said Axel, leaping deftly onto his feet to regard his visitor, standing boredly on the other side of the bars, "You haven't lost your touch, Moonboy."

Saix hadn't changed too much since Axel had last seen him. He'd cut his hair a little shorter, probably to symbolize his shackling to the societal machine, and he looked somehow a little older without looking _old_. He still dressed like a catalogue model, though, in stark white trousers and a light blue sweater. Axel wondered if he got a lot of flak for the plunging neckline, but imagined Saix wouldn't care. He _was_ still Moonboy, after all.

"You know I've become a local celebrity around this place?" asked Saix, arms crossed, "I am apparently the highest authority on your inner workings and exploits. Yuffie thinks it's hilarious."

"So _you're_ the one I have to thank for my Living Legend status, eh? Thanks, man; I owe you one."

"Add it to the list," said Saix, for one moment reminding him starkly of Riku. As though he'd read his mind, Saix continued, "Who was the other kid in the car?"

"You wouldn't know him, and he _wasn't_ a kid, alright? He turned eighteen last spring. You know how the media is, they see the guy with the biker jacket and they're down on him like harpies."

Saix nodded slowly. Axel wasn't sure whether or not he imagined the way his hand went briefly to the badge at his waist, but it seemed like it. Axel himself couldn't quite tear his eyes off it. It was _right_ there, after all: shiny and authoritative and alienating.

"I heard you refused a phone call,"

"Semantics. I tried once, didn't go anywhere."

They looked at each other for a while, Saix pawing the ground with his foot. In that moment, Axel knew Saix knew exactly who'd he been trying to call, and somehow the thought made him both angry and sad.

"I know what you're gonna say; I can't leave well enough alone, something about self-control, responsibility, all that PBS bull. Could you not?"

Axel would never admit it, but at the moment he wouldn't exactly mind a lecture from Saix. He missed them.

"I wasn't going to lecture you at all," Saix turned his head to look back toward dispatch, and sighed, "I was _going_ to say that, if you needed a change of clothes or something… My break comes up in twenty. The old lady downstairs still has a key right?"

"Oh…um…yeah. Yeah she does." Axel tried to think of something to say to that, but for once was at a loss for words, "…Thanks. Saix." He hadn't said his proper name in so long it felt sort of weird on his tongue.

He put his hand around one of the bars of the cell and managed a smile. Saix didn't exactly smile back, but his mouth did twitch for about a half second, his hand closing around the bar two slots down from the one Axel was holding.

"Don't mention it." He said at last, "This time,"

He started back toward dispatch, but as he was going, stopped as if just remembering, "Ah. The kid's mom called a little while ago. She's not pressing charges."

That lightened Axel up more than he could properly express. Somehow he hadn't been thinking as much about _that_ part of the case. Maybe it was selfish of him, but he'd put it to the back of his mind.

Probably sensing how relieved Axel looked, Saix added, "I wouldn't start celebrating just yet. There's still the DUI…"

"And the parking meter I assassinated, got it." He shrugged, "I guess I'll just tackle that when I get to it. I'm good at that, you know."

"Yeah," said Saix, "I know."

With that he left the room, the door swinging shut with a tremendous slam behind him. Running his hands down his face, Axel moved to sit back down on the cot.

"The Many Adventures of Moonboy and Destiny's Bitch," he whispered, smiling inexplicably, "Aw, Jesus Christ…"

He wasn't sure exactly how, but he fell asleep faster than a little kid on Ritalin.

* * *

Cid's was unusually busy for a Wednesday night. Celeste couldn't think of a really good reason, yet her mind immediately went to tailgate parties and parking lot barbecues. Of course, those things weren't going to be prerequisites at a high school football game, however historically significant it was supposed to be.

"I need three Ugly Ducklings, extra sauce, hold the butter!" she called through the open partition into the kitchen.

"Hold the butter?" Cid turned to her with murder in his eyes, chewing his unlit cigarette like it was a peppermint stick, "The hell is the world coming to? What the hell kinda psychopath doesn't like butter?"

"This guy, and if you want me to get a tip, you'll hold the butter."

Cid shook his head and muttered a curse, but for Celeste's sake he got to work, breading the cutting board with an industrious speed that looked both mechanical and very passionate.

She leaned against the wall as she waited, looking up and down the dive. Nights like this were as beautiful as they were exhausting. The dim lighting, the susurrus of chatter and laughter among the patrons., the glorious chaos of it all.

It was, if nothing else, a welcome distraction.

"Order up! Celeste, head out of the clouds!"

"Hm?" she turned to find the plate of food, steaming hot, sitting on the sideboard, "Sorry Cid, I don't know what's come over me…"

"You don't, eh?" Cid pushed the plate toward her, "Listen, not that I don't appreciate all the extra shifts, but maybe you oughta just take the night off."

"I can't," replied Celeste, taking the plate and starting off toward the customer's table.

She would have liked to, but Sora had been so insistent, beseeching her in that big-eyed, open way of his. He'd even smiled at her, told her it was all going to be alright, that he could get by on his own, that he'd be just fine, and that she shouldn't let what had happened to him disrupt the job he knew she cared so much about.

Celeste got the order to the customer with her usual 'Well, ain't that good service?' smile. She'd been at this business long enough to know people were more likely to tip somebody who didn't look like they hated themselves, their job and the customers.

Yet it was always difficult to get a good, solid tip on nights when their famous Serenading Waitress was working.

Celeste turned to follow the strains of soft, lilting song, beginning as organically and naturally as a soft spring drizzle.

" _In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone…_ "

She stood so primly amongst a cluster of tables in the back of the room, hands folded in front of her, body swaying in time with her music. She wore flowers in her hair, little azaleas that may have looked garish were it not for how earnest and, well, innocent she seemed.

Celeste sighed, forcing herself back to earth. She was too spacy tonight, it wouldn't do. Yet she couldn't shake the image of Sora's wide eyes, his pleading expression, how he smiled to comfort her, at the same time saying he didn't need any comforting.

When her break time came, she sat in the backroom, munching on a tray of Cid's famous home fries with little enthusiasm.

"Nice and quiet back here, right?"

Celeste looked up as the singing waitress herself strode in, face a little flushed from her most recent performance, "Show over for tonight, Aerith?"

"Curtain falls the moment somebody asks for a lapdance," Aerith chuckled, sitting down at the table, "You okay?"

Aerith had that manner of _knowing_ about her. Celeste had no idea what it was, but the girl was twice as perceptive as anybody her age had a right to be.

She shrugged, "At this point I'm counting my blessings. It could have been much worse."

"I heard you didn't press charges," she paused, embarrassed, "Sorry. Cid was having a field day about it, I don't mean to gossip."

Celeste shook her head, "He thinks I have the disposable income for a lawsuit. You'd think he'd know better, since he writes the paychecks. He means well, though."

In another time, another life, Celeste may have taken the case to court, had that nameless biker prosecuted, charged and convicted. But court battles were messy things, and Celeste had no wish to expose Sora to that. Not now, never again.

"I just wanted the whole thing to be over with," she continued, "Besides, the kid will get the riot act anyway from all I heard."

"Kid? He's practically my age."

"Not as far as it matters," Celeste pushed her chair back, tracing lines in her potatoes with her fork, the way Sora sometimes did at dinner, "He's going to the football game tonight."

She was barely aware she was speaking aloud. Aerith didn't need to know any of Sora's business, after all, and Celeste usually tried to keep her family and work lives separate.

"Oh," she nodded, as if she understood, "that makes sense. You know how boys are when they're passionate about something."

The way she said that, 'how boys are', made Celeste laugh despite herself, "Well Sora is very passionate. I wasn't sure if it was good for him, you know…since he wouldn't be playing and…"

"He'll feel included, though. Better than sitting at home alone," she paused, frowning, "Oh, Celeste, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for that to sound…"

"No, no, it's fine. Sora said I should work tonight, that he knew how important the Wednesday shift is…" she sighed, "I don't think he knows heads or tails about what I do here, but he thinks my life revolves around it."

He'd sat there on the couch, Marie in his lap, telling her over and over again not to worry, he would be alright, he'd go to the game to support his friends. Yes, he felt well enough; no, he wasn't still upset. Smiling all the while.

"Your son sounds like a really great kid," said Aerith, "He cares about you."

"He does," replied Celeste, "but I don't think he wants me to care about _him_."

Aerith raised her eyebrows, "What do you mean?"

It occurred to Celeste that she'd been thinking this for some time, yet only now, after this car accident, after this football game, did she fully comprehend how true it was.

"He's always smiling, always beaming. He has the sweetest smile, and I love it, I love seeing him happy. I think Sora knows that, and he tries to look happy for me all the time, even when he's miserable. He's afraid of how I'll react or something. He doesn't want me to worry."

She remembered the moment of terror she'd felt when she heard about the car crash, the speed with which she'd driven to the hospital, the gut-wrenching sorrow of seeing him in that bed. And he'd smiled and joked about it, because that's just who Sora was. And Celeste both loved and resented it.

"You mean he hides how he really feels, to protect you?" Aerith spoke in a faraway voice, nodding slowly, "I know what that's like."

Celeste wasn't sure how Aerith could know. She was young, still in school, only just starting out in the world. Intelligent and talented, yes, but her childlike naiveté made it hard to believe she had much experience with other people.

But all she said was, "Still, I'd be less worried if he let me know how worried _he_ was."

Aerith smiled sadly, "It's harder than swimming upriver, isn't it?"

Celeste may have said more, but at that point Cid called from the kitchen. Feeling as though she'd just come out of a trance, Celeste smiled at Aerith and got to her feet.

"Back to the grind, eh?" said Aerith, holding the door open for her.

"I suppose so. And Aerith," she put a hand on her shoulder, "thank you."

"Don't mention it," she replied, her voice musical enough she might have been singing already.

* * *

The crowd was cheering, the refs blowing their whistles, the bleachers shaking under the momentum of more than one hundred people, clapping their hands and stomping their feet. The air pulsed with expectation, with excitement, with the thrill of battle.

And Sora, sitting there and watching it, felt like he was dying the slowest, most painful death imaginable.

Kairi sat next to him, clearly doing her best to help him put a bright face on it, "That was a pretty good pass by Tidus! He's holding up like a champ."

"He shouldn't have passed," whispered Sora, speaking into his hands, which he had by now pressed over his mouth as if to keep away noxious gas, "Zack's going to run the ball."

"Isn't that…" Kairi said slowly, "isn't that what Zack's _supposed_ to do?"

"Yeah. But he won't."

Sure Zack had the enthusiasm, he had spirit and all that stuff everybody said Sora had. But…and Sora didn't really want to be _mean_ about it, but… he wasn't as good as Sora was.

He really wanted to believe it, though, the way he'd stood in the locker room before the game, doing his squats all proud and giddy as a kid at Christmas.

"Don't worry, man!" Squat. "I won't let you down!" Squat. "Unbeaten season, right?" Squat. "We are Destiny High!" Squat. "Brotherhood!" Squat, jump to feet, high-five, which Sora reciprocated with a smile, feeling ready to puke.

For a moment, however, it looked as though Zack might, in fact, run the ball straight to the end zone. The 30, the 20, the 10 before, either because of Twilight's defensive back or his own inherent clumsiness, he fell into a sprawl, and the ball came slipping out of his hands like a greased chicken.

A roar of frustration and disappointment went up in the stands. Sora's mouth hung open too, but he made no noise beyond a hurt, croaking sort of whimper.

"It's over," he managed at last, "Done."

"What? There's still ten minutes left…"

"21-7, ten minutes, Tidus is angry, Zack doesn't know what he's doing, everybody's tired." He sighed, "That's it."

"Come on, Sora, since when have _you_ ever balked at the odds? You survived a car crash, with only a few scratches, remember?"

"A few scratches, yeah," Sora laughed hoarsely, "Enough for a bedrest sentence." He gestured around at the bleachers, "Really beat the odds on that one, huh?"

Kairi sighed and turned back to look at the field and Sora bit his lip, "Sorry, Kai. I know you're worried about me and everything… Jeez, _everyone's_ worried about me."

"Yes, Sora, we are. We're supposed to, we're your _friends._ " She leaned her head against his, and Sora got a brief rush at the sweet, soft smell of her red hair against his face. Some girly tang of passion fruit shampoo and a little hint of something more tropical, exotic, adventurous.

"Okay, so maybe some of us are a bit more than friends," Kairi chuckled, as Sora ran his fingers through her hair.

"Some of us?"

Kairi rolled her eyes, "Talk about shooting subtlety in the head…" she trailed off, and Sora noted the pointed hesitation in her voice. It took him a moment before he realized what she had said, and why she'd stopped herself.

Selphie's silly joke about suicidal subtlety, directed at Kairi's very own mysterious stalker. Sora probably wouldn't have cottoned on to it at all, but Kairi was always a bigger judge of her own actions than anybody else could ever be.

"You and I," said Sora instead, turning her head slowly around to face him, and kissing her on the cheek, not aware of the snickers from a few rows back. Let them see their dishonored running back have a moment with his girlfriend. Let them see he wasn't bothered by any of this. If enough of them ended up believing that, maybe Sora would come to believe that himself.

"I like the sound of that," said Kairi, whatever apprehension she had had now gone. No point thinking of that one extra dark cloud hanging over this whole mess.

Sora didn't want to think about it, he barely wanted to think of 'it' as _him_. Him, and his friend, and the car they had so 'accidentally' driven up the curb, sending him diving off to the side.

His face had come shimmering up the surface only once since he'd left the hospital, jarring him out of a restless sleep, like some kid with a high fever. Just a wavering image of that cold, impersonal green stare, fixed on him from across the lawn, and fixed on Kairi before that.

He'd staggered down the hall to the bathroom after that, splashing ice cold water from the sink into his face, determined to wash that image from his mind, to erase that stare once and for all. Frightened, maybe, but not of the face itself but of how it had made him feel.

Sure, he knew what anger was like. A guy plays football long enough he gets used to anger, to hot-blood, to the rush of competition. It becomes as useful an alley as a hindrance.

But this was a different kind of anger, a cold and hardened anger, and it had left him shaking, pale and ashamed.

Destiny lost the game, their division, and their first unbeaten season in seventeen years. It was a good fight, but the team had tired out too early, their runner was too enthusiastic for his own good… And, though Sora knew they would never tell him this, they were too used to playing with him to get used to playing without him.

It was his fault. They would never tell him, but Sora knew. It was all his fault; they'd all been counting on him, relying on him to sweep across that field like the wind, victory as sure as the fresh dawning breeze or some other poetic crap.

Selphie met them halfway across the parking lot, hands clasped in a knot, chewing anxiously on a strand of hair. "Hey Kairi! Sora." She stepped toward Sora at once, arms raised as though to hug him, but she fell back, uncertain, "…party's still on at my place. If you're going."

"Oh," Kairi looked from Selphie to Sora, "The after party. I…I almost…"

"I thought we could still all use a good time," said Selphie, "And poor Wakka had to visit allthosegas stations to find booze…"

"Sounds good," said Sora, patting Selphie gently on the shoulder, "We'll be there."

He felt Kairi's eyes on him, surprised but pleasantly so. Selphie beamed, "Thanks guys. I'd better find Tidus, I've been led to believe he's hiding from everybody."

"I know the feeling," replied Sora, "I'll find him for you."

"You sure?" asked the girls, almost in the same breath.

"Totally; I'll meet you guys at Wakka's." he waved them both off, already making his way back toward the field, and the locker room beyond it.

Sora figured Kairi would want to follow him, but would know enough not to. He loved her for that, whatever that quality was called.

The locker room was almost empty when he reached it, shrouded in a hot mist from a running tap. Sora sighed, walking up and down the length of the showers, until he spotted a familiar silhouette in the frosted glass.

He rapped on the glass with his knuckles, a quick _Ta Ra Ra Ra Boom De Ay_.

"Sora?" came his voice, faint and exhausted from inside.

"Hey, Ti." Sora managed.

"Selphie said you might be watching tonight."

"Wouldn't have missed it for the world. You guys did good."

"Try telling that to lynch mob."

"Aw c'mon, man, there's no _mob_ …" Sora hesitated, "Could you stop trying to drown yourself and talk to me face-to-face? Please?"

There was a length of silence before Tidus sighed, and the water turned off with a squeak. When Tidus did emerge from the shower, he was soaking wet, still half dressed, and looking like he'd made at least one attempt at dashing his head against the wall.

"We're all still going to Selphie's after party," Sora continued, deciding it was best not to comment on his friend's appearance.

"More like funeral reception," Tidus shook his head, "Look, Sora, it's not like I don't appreciate you cheerleading for me, it's just…"

"Cheerleader? My voice isn't _that_ high, right?"

Tidus laughed, and the sound was relieving enough to make Sora laugh too.

"What?" he continued, "Look, don't you think _I_ would drown in the shower if I could?"

Tidus reddened, abashed, "Oh. Sorry, man, I…should have put things in perspective."

"Not the point. Look…I know how crappy this all feels. I know how much we were counting on this game but... Life goes on, right?"

Tidus rolled his eyes, "Leave it to you to say that with a straight face."

"It's true!" Sora spread his arms wide, as if the change room was some wide open vista under a clear blue sky, "Look, Tidus, we're young and free and healthy and…and we've got friends and family and all that stuff. So we didn't get an unbeaten season, that sucks."

"Yeah, it sucks, and please don't lie and tell me you're okay with it."

"Fine, I won't! I'll tell you the truth, it pisses me off, I kind of want to punch something, but I won't!" he paused for breath, not sure where all this _feeling_ had come from, "And you know why I won't?"

"They gave you the real good stuff at the hospital?"

"I have people who would go _nuts_ if I punched something! And so do you! There's your folks and my mom and Kairi and Selphie and Wakka…"

"Shall I start the brass band?"

"Aw shut up!" Sora thumped him on the shoulder…friendly, of course, "They don't want to see us end our lives all because of a football game! See? Allegedly, there's more to life than football. Who knows, maybe they're right?"

He shook Tidus, laughing like an idiot. Tidus laughed with him, "Fine. Fine, maybe you're right. But there are just as many people who'd love to see you and me take a long, cold shower and never come out."

"Well _fuck them_ , then!" Sora clapped Tidus on the shoulder, "Nobody cares what they think, why should we? So what if they laugh when we lose the season, when we embarrass ourselves, when we jump _badassly_ away from their souped up sport's cars!"

"We still talking about me?" asked Tidus, cocking an eyebrow.

"We're talking about everyone," Sora dragged Tidus over to where his gym bag lay, tossed forlornly by the lockers, "Now put some clothes on. Selphie's waiting."

Tidus sighed, laughing patiently, but at last he went over to the bag and began rifling through it, "Sora, I tell you, you're something else."

"I'd agree with that, but you'd just call me an arrogant asshole again," he replied breezily, tossing his head in what he supposed may even be an arrogant fashion after all. At the moment, however, he was too proud of regaining his pride to care.

* * *

There was nothing pleasant about standing in a police station after dark, particularly not if you had a stigma as part of a local pestilence that needed to be weeded out for the sake of the community.

Riku felt their eyes on him from the moment he walked in the door, noticed the almost ridiculous precision with which they searched his backpack, looking disappointed when they found nothing, as if they had honestly expected him to have walked into the police station armed to the teeth, or with party drugs stuffed down his socks.

They could give the local pestilence more credit than that, couldn't they?

And when he'd announced his intentions…forget it, you'd think they thought he was setting them up for an ambush.

"Kid, you're gonna need more than paperclips and bubblegum for this one," the guy at the front desk had sneered like Riku was some precious orphan child come in off the street.

Riku relished the way the smirk melted away when he pushed the check across the desk to him.

"…Wait here," he was told, in a much different voice now. Not quite respectful, but at least not cloying. He could live with that

As he waited, Riku observed one of the people in the dispatch was studying him a little differently than the others. Not with open distrust or hostility, but with a more genuine curiosity.

Riku turned back to meet the guy's eyes (Blue hair, huh? Won some points in his book, at least for empathy), and nodded at him. The cop smiled back, stepping across the room to him.

When he spoke, it was in a husky, naturally quiet sort of the voice, unlike the kind you usually heard from suits at a police station. He had a badge, though, so he was either a very bad plant or very new at his job.

"Does Axel ever thank you for cleaning up after him?"

Riku's fists clenched of their own accord, though he knew what a bad idea it was for a guy like him to lose his cool in a place like this.

"What's it to you?"

The cop held his hands up, as if in surrender, "Not an attack; believe me, I can sympathize." There was a short pause and his face changed subtly, "You don't know who I am, do you?"

Riku said nothing, looking this guy up and down, looking for some indication of who the hell he was supposed to be and where he got off asking questions Riku didn't want to make himself answer.

"My knight in shining armor! Can't say I was expectin' ya this time…"

Axel stood in the entrance to the cell block, an extremely irritated-looking cop at his side. Riku observed whatever lingering injuries he still had after the accident were by and large a thing of the past by now. Lucky him; Riku still couldn't sit up without feeling like an arthritic grandma.

He was also dressed differently; the lighter wash jeans, and one of his ratty gray sweaters which he seemed to think made him look elegantly disheveled.

Axel's boyish grin faded when he saw Riku's unasked for companion, "…ah. You met Moonboy."

"Moonboy?" Riku repeated.

"Saix," supplanted the cop.

"Don't you have that report to write up?" asked the other cop, the one escorting Axel, "You're already overtime."

"So are you," replied Saix, not unkindly. The other cop sighed, bringing Axel to the front desk, where the dispatch sullenly produced a plastic bag. Riku could spot a wallet, Zippo lighter, bottle of inexplicably expensive cologne, half a dozen hairpins and a few foil wrappers Riku supposed were for feng shui purposes.

"Your personal effects," said the dispatch.

"Hey, wait up, where are my keys?" asked Axel at once, "I have a car, you know."

"Somehow we didn't miss that," said the cop with the barest hint of irony. Riku noticed a scar across the side of his face, down his brow to the outer corner of his right eye; he took in a sharp intake of breath in recognition, but there were more important things at present.

"Car's still in impound; it's evidence. Besides, you won't be going far anyway."

"What? I'm not a flight risk!"

"Then prove it," interjected Saix, "Just stay in town 'till your court date. Don't let your friend's money go to waste,"

Axel looked again from Riku to Saix and relented, taking the bag from the dispatch and putting a hesitant arm around Riku's shoulder, "Until next time, then, boys! Tell Yuffie Axelrod sends his regards. Don't worry, Squall, I'll tell Seifer you say hi. Saix…"

"Nice to meet you, Riku," Saix replied, looking back up at Axel, "Try and keep this one in check, eh?"

Riku made a noncommittal grunt as he followed Axel out of the station. Axel, however, had words the moment they stepped out into the cool night air.

"Not that I'm not grateful Riku, but you didn't have to bail me out! I could have lasted 'till court, you know me…"

"I figured I owed you," said Riku, "For taking all the blame."

"What? I lied? _You_ had nothing to…"

"I listened to you, instead of telling you to pull over or something. And I was hungover too, they could've just as easily locked me up for it."

"Bail was…er…bail wasn't exactly bargain bin, man."

"It's fine."

"Yeah, I know, Riku, it's you, money's no object…"

"If you wanna give me an IOU, Ax, go ahead, I won't complain."

"Point taken."

They had almost reached the sidewalk now, "I guess we're walking, huh?" asked Axel.

Riku stopped in his tracks, "Well, gee, I wonder why?" he demanded, loud enough that Axel flinched, "Your car is half a crime scene, and Betty… _my bike_ is on loan to Seifer."

"Okay, okay! I was just asking…trying to lighten the mood."

"Lighten the mood? My God, everything is a goddamn joke to you, isn't it? Oh, you auctioned off my bike, you got arrested, we almost killed somebody! What a fucking barrel of monkeys, right?"

"Riku, man, you're shouting."

"You don't say?" Riku kicked the wire netting of the fence that lined the parking lot, crying out in mixed anger and frustration as he felt the sharp tines of the metal cut into his jeans.

He paused, breathing deeply to calm himself down. He felt his blood pumping in his ears, and his hand was shaking against the railing.

"Who's Moonboy?"

"Oh. You mean Saix."

"Whatever his name is. I've never seen him before."

Axel sighed deeply, leaning against the fence, "Maybe we should walk and talk. I've got a feeling Squall and his buddies are getting a good laugh at us from here." He put his arm back around Riku's shoulder, leading him down the sidewalk, "Yeah, Squall, can you believe it? Same guy that put Seifer in his…"

"Who's Saix?"

"Fine." Axel continued, speaking in a softer voice, "He was an old friend, back when I was in high school. I mean…you know, way back. Before we met. We joined up with the gang together."

"And now he's a cop."

"Don't hold it against him; his was a different calling." He paused uncertainly, "He didn't give you a rough time, right? I mean, he's an awesome guy, just takes some getting used to…"

"Well, according to Saix, he and I are both used to cleaning up after you," Riku looked at Axel, "He sympathized."

"Oh. He said that?" Axel looked back and forth on the street, "Shit." As he sat down at a convenient bus stop. Riku sat beside him, placing his bag squarely between his feet.

"Look, Riku, I'm sorry I got you into this, okay? I'm sorry about Seifer and Betty and the kid…"

"Sora," explained Riku flatly, "his name is Sora."

"…they don't blame you for it, right?"

"Ax, they saw two people get out of the car and one of them is a guy in their class, who do you think they're gonna take it out on?"

Riku ran his hands slowly down his face, trying not to think of what waited for him at school tomorrow. He'd heard Sora wouldn't be allowed to play the division game tonight. The whole school would be up in arms, and Riku the scapegoat.

It was preferable being invisible.

"Sorry, man."

"Please, Ax, stop apologizing," said Riku, looking halfway up from his hands, "I'm losing track of 'sorrys'."

"Guess I deserve that,"

For one moment Riku considered telling Axel that no, he didn't. That he was just being sulky and resentful again, and it wasn't as bad as he was making it out to be.

But he chased the impulse away, and sat in the cold for some time longer, silent.

"Where you going now?" asked Axel at last, and Riku was surprised to find he was still there.

He stood up, picking up his bag, "Home, I guess." And started off in that general direction, not waiting for Axel to call out after him or chase him down. Which he didn't seem to try anyway.

Riku wasn't sure at what point he decided where he was actually going, but by the time he did register he was _not_ , in fact, heading for home, he figured it was too late. Might as well go where his feet were taking him, and reap what he'd sown, either by accident or on purpose.

* * *

Selphie's after party consisted mainly of the assembled guests sitting around her living room, fatalistically munching Doritos and pretzels. Every once and a while somebody would go for a drink, if only so Wakka's many midnight runs for the forbidden elixir that was Budweiser were not entirely put to waste.

Somehow the rare luxury of imbibing meant less when you actually had sorrows to drown.

Kairi was curled up in an easy chair with Sora, who was smiling vacantly into space as if to prove to everybody that he really was okay after all, whatever the bandage on his head said.

Selphie sat on the floor next to the chair, her head lying in Tidus's lap scandalously enough that it was quite lucky Selphie's parents were out on one of their innumerable late night hotel dates. Tidus was tossing the game ball up and down in a steady rhythm, face worked up in an expression of almost comical concentration.

Zack, leaning against the mantelpiece a few paces away, followed the ball with his eyes, mouth half open as if in muted amazement. He looked exhausted, whatever glow of life that usually powered his eager-beaver attitude for once extinguished.

Others, members of the team, their girlfriends, so on, were lying slovenly and defeated around the room, in their still and disheveled states looking like royal dinner guests murdered at the feast, the kinds of over-the-top tragedies Mr. Thatch usually described in great, yet aggravatingly sterile detail.

The dolorous silence was broken about half an hour into the party by the intervention of Wakka's Reggae collection.

"C'mon, it's a party, isn't it?" he asked them, leaning against his boombox to look at them all appraisingly, "I know I didn't put my ass on the line just so you barely legals can have a pity party."

"Wakka, please…" implored Selphie, lifting her head from the apparently very comfy confines of Tidus's sweatpants.

"Oh, yeah, 'cuz this party was _my_ idea, right? Sis, you asked for a football party, I gave you the material, you ain't delivering."

Tidus glowered, "If you want us to start jumping around and having wet tee-shirt contests, Wakka, you'll be disappointed. We're not exactly in a partying mood."

"Then why come all the way here just to squat in my house?" asked Wakka.

"It's my house too!" interjected Selphie.

"You don't pay any bills, Sis."

"The nudie cable stations don't count as a utility!"

Sora cut into the sibling squabbling, surprising Kairi as he gently shifted her off his lap so he could sit more prominently in the chair, "Better sitting here together than sitting around alone."

"So, that's it? You all sit here, in my house, being lonely together. Bullshit. I put my ass on the line so you could get nice and shitfaced and have a good time, not act like you just came back from the wars."

"Maybe…" began Kairi, getting carefully to her feet, "Maybe Wakka has a point? Why let the game take away our after party, right? We still know how to have a good time!"

She knew her own reputation was far from 'party girl' so this may seem pretty lame coming from her, but she'd been so heartened by Sora coming with them, and getting Tidus out of whatever funk he'd been in, that she felt to waste the night's efforts on negativity was nothing short of counterproductive.

Affecting the manner of a queen at her coronation, Kairi made her way over to the round, glass-topped coffee table, and got herself a cold one from the cooler.

"Destiny High!" she squealed in a deliberately higher-pitch version of Selphie's own girlish shriek, eliciting several laughs from the group.

"That's the spirit!" said Wakka, opening the can for her. Nodding in thanks, Kairi guzzled the can the way a party girl ought.

That opened the floodgates, so the speak. Next moment, Sora was at her side, and then Selphie, then Tidus, even Zack emerged from his self-imposed cocoon against the wall.

"And to Twilight's running back!" added Tidus, raising his own cup, "May he never piss straight again!"

Kairi was tempted to ask just how and when that particular on-field incident had occurred, but Sora had already added to the rejoinder, "And to my replacement, for having the balls to go out there tonight in the first place!"

He clapped Zack on the shoulder, drinking to him as he did so.

Zack blushed, either from the attention or from the Bud, "Oh, wow…thanks, man. And…er…" anxious, his eyes seemed to find the first viable thing, "To Selphie! For…um…for letting us all get drunk in your house!"

A round of applause for Selphie, who fell back against the coffee table with a laugh, "And to Kairi! For starting this stupid ass game in the first place!"

Things were easier after that. People talked more freely, jokes were easier to come by, nobody was left quite out of the group. Eventually people started dancing, jerkily swaying to Reggae like only drunk white teenagers can.

Sora stood off to the side of the designated dance floor, opening and closing his mouth for about three minutes before Kairi decided to put him out of his misery, "Why yes, Monsieur, I'd love to dance," leading him onto the floor.

"You came out in full force tonight," commented Sora, stepping awkwardly in time with her, though thankfully not treading on her toes, "Rallying everybody together like that,"

"It was nothing, really. You know how I hate long silences."

"No, you hate watching people suffer. Not the same thing."

"I'm not the only one," she touched him a little more firmly on the shoulders, indicating he could step closer if he liked, "It was really sweet of you, complimenting Zack like that."

"He played a good game," said Sora, obliging, "Okay, he made the best of a bad situation. Still, not his fault. He shouldn't be hating on himself."

"Words to live by," said Kairi, reaching up one hand to delicately brush Sora's bandage.

He chuckled at the touch, maybe embarrassed, maybe ticklish, shaking his hair so it could fall back to cover the wound for however long he could keep it down, "If you're hinting that I should follow my own advice, I'll have you know I _will._ I mean, I am, right now. Promise."

"Good. Because it isn't your fault. If you ever _do_ ever screw up royally and we all end up fucked forever, rest assured I'll let you know."

"My very own Early Warning System," Sora chuckled, "Thanks."

They danced together without saying anything for a while, Sora doing his best to impress her, and Kairi resisting to correct his flubs. It wasn't hard to resist, though; she was drunk off the night, off Sora, and admittedly off all the Bud.

At one point Zack, now emboldened as ever, took to the floor with a madly giggling Selphie, evidently oblivious to Tidus, who was engaging some of his teammates in what looked like a very confused play-by-play of a drive they probably could no longer remember.

"Looks like there might be trouble before the night's over," Kairi remarked, observing this.

"Should I get Tidus' attention?" asked Sora, sounding excited.

"No," Kairi rolled her eyes, "Let's get some fresh air. What do you say?"

Sora didn't say anything, really, but he perked up at the suggestion of alone time. They slipped through the press of guests quite effortlessly, escaping into the beautiful openness of Selphie's front porch.

"Whew, it's cold," Kairi commented, sitting gingerly down on the whicker porch swing.

"Warm enough for me," commented Sora, sitting down near her.

"You're always warm," said Kairi, curling her legs up underneath her. Sora pulled her close to him, sighing deeply.

"It's always so _quiet_ out here," he said at last.

"It's 11:30 on a Wednesday, Sora, of course it's quiet."

"I said _always_ , didn't I?"

So Kairi listened with him. The faint strains of music from inside the house, a dog's bark a few blocks away. Too late in the day for cars on this picturesque residential street, and too late in the year for crickets to be singing.

"It's nice," said Kairi, "You don't like the quiet?"

"It's okay, I guess, just…I dunno. It makes you think."

"Thinking?" Kairi raised her eyebrows, "Heaven forbid!" she looked at him to let him know she was joking, "No, but I get what you mean."

"Remember we used this block as a football field, a baseball diamond…"

"The North Pole," added Kairi, counting on her fingers, "the Sahara Desert, Vegas…"

"…a volcano, Evil Wizard's Castle…"

"We always made Wakka the Wizard; we thought we were such geniuses."

"…Haunted bowling alley, talent-show stage…"

"Oh God, the talent shows!" Kairi sat up, "Remember Selphie's Cher act?"

"How can I forget, she made me Sonny twice." Sora crossed his legs, sucking his cheeks in with an exaggerating puckering noise.

"Oh no…" said Kairi, realizing what he was going to do, but Sora had already started to belt out a wailing approximation of eight-year-old Selphie's wailing approximation of everyone's favorite diva, " _I was five and he was six, we rode on horses made of sticks_ …"

"Oh my God, you are _so_ drunk!" she laughed, sounding pretty drunk herself.

"… _he wore black and I wore white, he would always win the fight_. _Bang! Bang!_ " two rhythmic claps, complete with a ridiculous little sashay.

" _He shot me down. Bang! Bang!_ " two more claps as he leaned over her, laughing through the lyrics, the bench swinging beneath them.

" _I hit the ground. Bang! Bang!_ "

Kairi let out a squeal as Sora rolled off the bench and onto his back on the porch, pulling her down with him. It was a short fall, and Sora seemed too intent on his act to break it now.

" _The awful sound. Bang! Bang! My baby shot me_..."

He trailed off, his eyes drifting away from Kairi to look off at something in the periphery, somewhere up the block.

Kairi eased herself off Sora, suddenly self-conscious, and noticed what he was seeing. A figure, pausing in the act off crossing the street, standing just between Selphie's front yard and the symmetrically-manicured lawn of the yard opposite.

It was hard to see in the dark, with only the hazy orange light of the street lamps for illumination, but nobody could mistake the metallic sheen of silver hair, the glint of those green eyes.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Sora's voice had changed; it was steelier, harder, angrier. He got to his feet, swaying a little, but there was too more trace of the goofball singer.

"Sora..." Kairi began, standing up and brushing herself off, "Come on, it's not…"

"You're just gonna keep following us around, right?" Sora demanded, heading down the front steps to where Riku stood, as though paralyzed, his face inscrutable, but for once not serenely complacent.

"Look," Riku began, and Kairi reflected this was the first time she'd ever really heard his voice. It was low and clear, yet it sounded emotional in a way she couldn't quite place, "I know you've been having a bad time on my account…"

"Is _that_ what you call it, huh?" Sora screamed this time, and Kairi could hear a hubbub of chatter from Selphie's house, see a light go on in the house two doors down.

So much for the quiet of the neighborhood at dark, and so much for putting this whole mess behind them. Hard to do that when the person responsible for the mess (however accidentally it may have been) walked right up to you.

"Following Kairi around, freaking her out…"

"Sora, come on, not here!" interjected Kairi, coming up beside him, but Sora wasn't listening.

"Look, Sora, let me explain…"

"Where do you get off?" Sora gave Riku a shove, eyes shining with fury, "Stalking some girl you don't even know, watching from the sidelines like some fucking creep! Who do you think you are, huh?"

"I came to apologize!" retorted Riku, "I never meant for…"

"Apologize?" Sora echoed, "Oh, did you hear that, Kairi? He's sorry!"

There were faces peering out Selphie's windows. Kairi could make out the blurry outline of Tidus, being restrained by someone who could only be Selphie. This could get ugly if she didn't intervene. As usual.

"You could have killed me!" Sora gave Riku another shove, one his opponent did not resist this time, sending him down onto the pavement, "But maybe you wanted that, right? Get rid of me so you can steal Kairi or something? You demented…"

"It wasn't like that!" Riku staggered to his feet, rubbing at his arms, "You don't really think I was trying to…"

Sora didn't let him finish. His fist flew, and Riku was thrown back with a roundhouse to the face. Good thing Sora wasn't at his full senses or else the damage would probably be much worse.

"Sora!" Kairi moved to stand between the two boys, "Come on, you made your point…"

But Riku, apparently fine being yelled at, was not so acclimated to being punched in the face.

"Watch it!" Sora cried, pushing Kairi out of the way just in time to get himself a solid sock in the gut on Riku's part.

"Dammit, just let me explain!" said Riku, his voice echoing in the street.

"Why the hell should I? I don't even know who you are!"

Sora's accusation gave Riku pause long enough for Sora to charge to him again. Another fist, another, a misplaced knee to the stomach, blocked by Riku.

Kairi slowly made her way back to the fray, feeling her side where she'd landed on the street.

"Stop it! Both of you!" Kairi shouted, physically restraining Sora, who was shaking with rage against her.

Riku stood off to the side, panting heavily. He looked from Kairi to Sora, opened his mouth as if to say something, but thought better of it. Kairi noted he had a split lip, a raw mark on his cheek. Sora had done a number on him.

Without saying anything, he turned and headed back up the block.

"You're bleeding," said Sora suddenly, and Kairi realized she was. A slow trickle of blood on the back of her hand, where it had scraped against the street.

"Yeah," she repeated dully, "looks that way." she couldn't keep the note of accusation out of her voice.

For a moment Sora didn't seem to understand, his brow crinkling in confusion. She noted he'd have more scars to add to the ones from the car accident; a mark on his chin, probably on his chest.

"I…I'm sorry, Kai. He was coming right for you. I was trying to get you out of the way."

"He was coming right for _you_ because you just had to egg him on!"

"You didn't really believe he wanted to apologize, did you? He's been stalking you for weeks…"

"And you wouldn't even have known that if Selphie hadn't told you!" she jabbed a finger in his face, her face burning though she wasn't sure why, "Let me ask you, if you hadn't known he'd been following me around, would you still have thought that stupid car crash was an assassination attempt?"

"Kairi, I didn't…" Sora put his hand on her shoulder, "Look, you can't say it wasn't suspicious how…"

"And what happened to forgetting about it? Putting it in the past? Living for the future, all the rest of that. Or was that just noise? Just some pretty motivational speech to shut me up!"

"Kairi…" Sora began, and she could tell she'd gotten to him, "I just… I was trying to protect you."

"Maybe I wouldn't have needed protecting if you didn't go trying to make trouble!" Barely knowing what she was doing, she started up the block, to where Audley Street met LaVerne Avenue.

She didn't look back, but could hear Sora's footsteps giving pursuit, "Where…where are you going?"

"You want an explanation, I'll go find one," she replied stiffly.

"You're…you're following him? Alone?" he asked, and for the briefest of moments Kairi imagined telling him no, of course not. That this was all silly and childish and she should just bring him back to Selphie's and get him cleaned up.

But she felt the blood on her hand, and was decided, "I am. You should go back inside."

"But…"

"If I need you to rescue me, I'll just give a call," she said bitterly, starting off around the corner.

His footsteps followed her as far as the corner, "Kairi! Kairi, come on! I'm sorry…"

She heard him calling for her for four straight blocks, and did not look back once, though she sometimes was sorely tempted.

His voice faded after six blocks, either because she'd walked out of earshot or because Sora had finally given up.

Kairi sighed, holding her bleeding hand up to her mouth. It really _was_ quiet out here.

* * *

 **A/N:** So, as currently schduled, Chapter 4 will be up next Friday, August 12.

Hope you're liking _Radiant Creatures_ so far!


	4. Rude Awakening

Chapter 4, Rude Awakening

* * *

 **A/N:** Happy Friday! Here is Chapter 4. It's back to the usual 4 scenes, and isn't quite as long as the previous chapter by default. A lot of gears start turning here, so have a good time putting your timelines together. This story _will_ be a mystery, at heart, after all.

* * *

Selphie woke up wrapped in her favorite quilt and with a man on either side of her. Good omens. Her first thought was that her party had somehow turned into a sleepover, and her second was that her parents had mercifully decided to take extra time ripping that hotel room to shreds.

And more power to them.

Fresh morning sunlight was streaming through the living room windows, allowing Selphie to observe the extent of trashed the house currently was. Plastic cups, empty cans and paper plates littered the floor. Sofa cushions were propped up at odd angles as though they'd been used to make forts.

"Pigs," muttered Selphie, wiping some of Tidus's drool off her face. Tidus, like most boys, could sleep through Armageddon without a twitch, so was not disturbed when Selphie lifted his arm off her and got to her feet.

Zack, however, giggled and muttered something about 'sick ice cream' from his position near her feet.

Part of Selphie was actually kind of grateful that any possible fight between these two beauty boys had been cut short by the…well, the _other_ big thing that happened. Not that it had been a good thing or anything, from all Selphie had gathered it had undone all the other great communal breakthroughs that had been made last night.

She drew the blinds, sighing contently at the pleasant sight of the street in the soft dawn light. So the reports of huge blood stains on the pavement had been greatly exaggerated. Good.

The kitchen was mercifully pristine, Selphie was glad to note. The living room could be trashed to hell and back, but this room was sacred.

She put on a pot of coffee in five minutes flat and filled up a bowl of Raisin Bran with all the raisins taken out. Wakka called her insane for doing this, but Selphie insisted quirks like this were what set you up to be famous.

Seizing the phone from the counter, Selphie automatically dialed Kairi's number, feeling the nervous but excited twinge you only get on the cusp of hearing the freshest and choicest gossip.

As long as Sora and Kairi were still okay, she'd live. Sora was good for Kairi…girl needed some fun, she was acting old as that withered grandmother of hers.

Instead of Kairi's tired, patient voice however, Selphie got the obnoxious bleating of the 'line busy' tone.

"Rude," she muttered, hanging up.

"What did I do?"

Selphie looked up, surprised, "Absolutely nothing, Zack. Guilty conscience?"

Zack scratched the back of his neck, blushing, "No. I…er…I'm sorry I stayed over."

Selphie waved it off, "You weren't the only one. Tidus still asleep?"

"Oh, um. Yeah, he is."

"Somebody better remind him it's a school day, and it won't be me. I'm not myself till seven." She gestured to the pantry, "Help yourself to breakfast. Most important meal of the day, after all."

"Sweet," Zack grinned, crossing to the pantry, "Thanks."

"Just don't touch the Apple Jacks, they're Wakka's oxycodone."

"No prob, you've got Wheaties!"

"Why am I not surprised you partake in the Breakfast of Champions?" she asked as he poured himself a bowl and sat opposite her.

"For all the good it does," he said with casual modesty, going to his cereal with gusto.

"You're champ enough," remarked Selphie, "If you ask me, O.D'ing on Champion Fuel is _not_ recommended."

"Guess not. Ego trips are a bitch, right?"

"So I hear," She watched him eat, twining a lock of hair slowly around her finger. At last, she could ignore the phone no longer and leaned over to the counter, picking it up off the hook, "One second, this should be quick." She told Zack, dialing.

Ten seconds later she had her answer, "Still busy," she sighed, hanging up.

Zack blinked, "Is it okay to ask _who's_ busy?"

"Kairi," Selphie replied at once, "She's never on the phone this early unless it's with me. She thinks it's 'rude' to harass people this early, or something."

"Oh," Zack nodded slowly, "do you think she's okay? Like…with Sora and everything?"

Selphie smiled, always charmed by the reflexive fear boys had of talking about the relationships and travails of other boys, like they were breaking some chromosomal contract or something.

To placate him, she began by way of a compliment, "You did an ace job helping me corral Tidus last night, by the by. He would have charged right out there and gotten his drunk-but-perky ass fair kicked. And for what?"

"Well, we were _all_ pretty wasted," Zack allowed.

"Yeah, but Tidus gets so _heroic_ when he's drunk, it's kind of sad. Don't tell him I said that, he doesn't like to hear it, which is Boy for he knows it's true." She shrugged, "Messy though it was, we would have made it worse getting involved."

"I don't know… I didn't really like seeing Sora get thrown around like that. Not after he stuck up for me and everything."

"Ugh, what _is_ it with boys and their fraternal loyalty codes?" Selphie cried with mixed irritation and admiration, "I swear, a boy does one nice thing for one other boy _one time_ and suddenly they're bros for life!"

"Not all the time!" said Zack, grinning sheepishly, "It's just…some boys aren't used to other boys doing nice things for them. Guys, I mean. Not boys."

"Well, not all _boys_ ," Selphie used the word insistently, "deserve an army of insta-bros. We girls have to work like hell just to find _one_ person we trust not to stab us in the back, forget about lifetime sorority."

Zack was quiet for a little while, "You and Kairi are pretty tight."

"Oh, yeah, we go way back. No worries on her stabbing me anytime soon. It's other girls you have to keep an eye on."

"Or maybe," Zack continued, "not all girls are out to get each other."

Selphie sighed, smelling defeat, "And some boys deserve to have bros for life." She looked up at the clock, then again at the phone, "Think I should call again, or do I contain myself till homeroom?"

"Maybe she's talking to Sora," suggested Zack.

"Not likely. It's a miracle when he's awake before homeroom starts, she paused, "Speaking, of course, as a friend and not from any other kind of experience."

"Don't worry, I wasn't getting any ideas. You had _me_ over tonight, after all."

"Yes, and I can infer you are either an early riser or just really offended by Tidus's snoring. Speaking of which," she leaned forward in her seat, raising her voice, "Tidus, I've set the house on fire and I need a strapping superman to save me from myself!"

A muffled noise of complaint from the next room. Selphie smiled, winking conspiratorially at Zack, "I bet Ti doesn't bring up the Amazing Adventure of the Wok and the Extension Cord in the locker room?"

"Er…no. I mean, _I've_ never heard it but…you know, I'm just second string running back."

"I wouldn't worry about that. I'm sure it's safe to say that the events of my _spectacular_ party have ensured you a spot in the in-crowd. Just mention homemade Moo Goo Gui Pan to Tidus and you'll never miss another team kegger or throwback or whatever the hell again!"

"I just might try that," said Zack, slurping at his Wheaties in a manner Selphie hoped was intentionally disquieting. Either way, she couldn't keep back a giggle at his expense.

"It's gonna be fun having you around," she said, "I just know it." She picked up her empty bowl and started for the sink, looking over her shoulder at him as she did so, "We'll make a Star out of you yet, Second String!"

"That's String the Second," added Zack, pointing at Selphie with a crooked grin, "Sounds classier."

The phone rang before Selphie could respond to that.

"Ooh, finally!" she squealed, trotting over to pick up the receiver, "Lolo, you've got Selphie on the horn."

She spotted Tidus stagger in from the living room, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and looking as though he'd quite forgotten where he was.

He looked first at Selphie, then at Zack, then at the box of Wheaties on the table as if trying to recreate a crime scene.

"Oh," said Selphie flatly at the tired but not-irritated voice on the other hand, "Yeah. Yeah, of course, _Mother_ ," she looked warningly at the two boys and began to make spastic gestures toward the living room and the front door beyond, "Yeah, it was great, we all had a great time. Yeah, I've got Wakka on clean-up duty. It's not like he has anything else to do, right?"

She laughed along with her mom, at the same time mouthing, ' _Out! Escape!_ ' to the two boys she' spent the night with.

God, if this story ever got out the rumor mill would have a field day. She'd be whipped through the streets, and not in a fun way.

Zack seemed pretty quick on the uptake, getting to his feet fast enough to shatter the bowl of Wheaties on the floor, prompting a "Son of a bastard!" from Tidus as he fell against the counter.

"Aw, crap! Sorry!" and Zack was on hands and knees trying to pick up the broken ceramic with his hands with little success.

"Oh, that was nothing," Selphie assured her Mom, shooing the boys still further, "Yeah, just some stray cats fighting outside. Yeah, it's fine. Of course, I'm going to school, yeah, sure…"

Getting the hint, a still crusty-eyed Tidus grabbed Zack by the arm and dragged him, protesting feebly, out of the room and, thankfully out of the house.

"I will, Mom," Selphie finished, "Love you too."

She hung up the phone, sighing at the mess on the floor, "The things I do for these people…" she muttered, getting the dustpan from beneath the sink to start tidying up.

Whatever had happened between Sora, Kairi and the Sultry, Silver-Haired Enigma that was Riku would have to wait till homeroom. Selphie supposed she could be patient. Broken bowl aside, the events of the last twelve hours had made her feel powerful as a Queen.

* * *

Marie had taken an inordinate interest in Sora's bruises. Try as he might to Neosporin the evidence of his thrashing (though he was still sure he'd given more than he'd taken) into submission, it seemed he'd have to go through the day with the red mark of Riku's anger on his face.

"I don't think that's gonna do much," Sora said as Marie tried to lick the bruise away, her pink, papery tongue lapping warmly up and down his cheek, "But thanks anyway,"

Marie meowed at this and leaped from the dresser to the bed, curling up so as to claim it as her own for the day.

It was only as he picked up his backpack and grabbed his jacket from the closet that Sora noticed something very unusual. There was no music playing in the kitchen. Instead, his Mom's voice, indistinct yet slow, was wafting in through the closed door.

It didn't have to mean anything, but of late the smallest adjustment to the usual routine was cause enough for suspicion, Sora felt.

His Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, today's paper folded up in front of her, unopened, the phone pressed to her ear.

Her eyes flicked up to meet Sora as he entered, and observed him with an intense inscrutability that only a parent could affect. She was toying with her glasses, Sora saw, turning them over in her hands as she spoke.

"…No, he's home," she was saying, "Yes, he came in last night, but I've no idea… No, of course you don't have to apologize…" she sighed, her free hand massaging her temple in slow, close circles, "I'll check with him. Yes, of course, just sit tight. If anything comes up, I'll let you know. Take care."

She hung up the phone and looked slowly up to Sora. It occurred to him how tired she looked.

"Um…morning, Ma."

"What happened to your face?" she asked at once, pushing her chair back from the table.

"Nothing," Sora sat in his usual spot before she could bring herself fully to her feet, "Just got into a scrape at the party."

"A scrape?" she repeated, "Sora, I'd like to think that after everything that's happened, you wouldn't be afraid of speaking to my face…"

"It's nothing!" Sora repeated, "It's fine, really." He almost added 'You should see the other guy', if only to bring a smile to her face, but something told him the joke wouldn't make her any happier today.

"That was Amphitrite on the phone," she said at length, her eyes never leaving the bruise.

"Who?"

"Kairi's Grandma," her eyes twinkled at him, as though even in her distress she found his lack of social pleasantries endearing.

"Oh, you mean Gran," Sora supplanted the name Kairi always used, "What did she want? I mean, what's wrong?"

How could he even contemplate asking that one when he already knew the answer? He remembered Kairi walking down the street and out of sight, her hand pressed to her face, telling him she didn't want his company. They'd been so happy before, laughing and singing and rolling around like a pair of kids…

He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her so upset before.

"Kairi never came home last night," she continued evenly, "Amphitrite thought she may have come back with you."

It felt almost like the whole room was growing around him, and Sora was shrinking away to a stain on the floor, a bug ready to be squashed. His Mom's eyes never left his face, unblinking, yet not angry or accusatory. But with the saddest eyes he'd ever seen on another person.

Why wasn't she ever angry at him? For once Sora wished she would be, just wished she'd yell at him, call him an idiot, call him an irresponsible jackass, call him everything he felt he was.

"I heard the door open about half past midnight," she continued, "Party went on late?"

"Maybe…I guess," Sora began, hastily adding, "I mean, I didn't stay at the party all night. Neither did Kairi."

"I see," Her tongue ran slowly along her lower lip, "You were together?"

"Look, Mom…it's not like that, I promise. It's…she left. She walked…" he paused, sighing, "We had a fight."

"You fought?" her hand reached out for the bruise on his face, stopping just short.

"No, no, not like…" Sora brushed her hand away, not sure whether the idea of Kairi laying a haymaker on him was funny or frightening, "We fought after the other fight."

"What other fight? Sora, what happened?"

She took his hand in hers and slowly lowered it to the table, running gentle fingers up and down as if to soothe him, the way she had when he was little and he'd been woken up in the night by thunder or lightning. How she'd hold him against her and she'd sing him back to sleep, even if she had work first thing in the morning, she'd be there as long as it took.

Sora leaned back in the chair, not sure how best to start, "Remember the guy in the Corvette?"

"The biker who was arrested? Or…the other one?" she paused, "Of course, the other one."

"Riku,"

"I know you and Tidus were angry at him for…for breaking up your game, but… Sora, honey, I thought we'd agreed it was an accident…"

"It's not just that, Mom. Riku was following Kairi,"

Somehow he knew how that word 'following' would affect her. Her hand stopped in its gentle caress up and down his arm. Her complexion, already light, paled further.

"You mean Kairi had a stalker?" she asked, hushed, "For how long?"

"A few weeks, I guess… I would've done something sooner, but Kairi thought…"

"Kairi thought it was nothing," his Mom finished for him, "Did he ever…do anything? Did they know each other?"

"No, Mom, of course not. I mean, I guess not. I would have known, right? Kairi and I have been friends, like, forever…"

"Keep going," she urged, firmly but her manner had changed from detached to a reassuring urgency, "This Riku, he turned up at the party?"

"Outside it. He was looking for me, I guess…wanted to 'apologize' or some B.S." he looked up to his Mom, "Sorry."

She shook her head, "You didn't believe him."

"Should I have? I mean, come on, Mom, maybe it _was_ an accident, but how do you forgive him following Kairi around, creeping her out…"

"You don't," she said softly, "Not unless he explained himself. But not to you, Sora, to Kairi."

"Well, then he should have apologized to Kairi," said Sora, maybe more poutily than he ought to have. It felt as though his Mom was on his side and not on his side. Maybe that was a useful asset in parenthood, but it was difficult to keep up with.

"Who threw the first punch?" she asked at length.

Sora sighed, looking down. To his surprise, she laughed softly, "Sora, sometimes I think you have to curb that temper of yours. And I would tell you that more often if I thought it would do any good."

"I…I don't know what came over me, Mom, alright? It was…he just walked right up like he expected us to just forget everything he'd done and I wasn't going to let it happen. It's not…it's not that easy. You can't just screw a bunch of people over and then want a welcoming committee. Right?"

"No, you can't. But you didn't need to lose control, Sora. Honey, you had the high ground up to that point, didn't you? And you decided to give it up for the sake of looking like the bigger man."

"It wasn't like that!" Sora insisted, thinking of Tidus and his insinuations, of how arrogant Sora could be, how sure of himself. Was he really just some grandstanding jackass football player?

No, no, Riku deserved it. There was no Bizarro version of this scenario that had _him_ as the bigger man. Surely his mother could see that.

"Well, maybe that's how it looked to Kairi," she told him, "Is that why you fought?"

Dammit, how did she _know_ these things?

"She…Kai told me she didn't need any protecting. That everything with Riku was her problem to deal with. So she went after him on her own." He sighed heavily, feeling a cold clamminess in his gut, "I should have gone with her anyway."

His Mom opened her mouth to say something about that, but apparently thought better of it. What she did say, at length, was, "Well, there's nothing we can do about that now, Sora. I wouldn't sit on it; nothing good ever came from wondering what you should have done."

She got up and, faster than Sora thought possible, was standing at the coat closet, pulling on her threadbare beige jacket.

"Um… Where are you going?" Sora asked.

She looked at him as if the answer should be quite painfully obvious, " _We_ are going to stop sitting on this. The faster we can do that, the more likely something good can be done about it."

And she smiled at him, that focused all-or-nothing beam that told Sora everything would be okay in the end, and if it wasn't then at least they would try. Maybe it was childish of him, but somehow Sora felt maybe it would be alright. Maybe he hadn't screwed up, this wasn't all his fault and he could still fix it.

Hell, he could try. He was good at trying, if nothing else.

* * *

Celeste had to give Amphitrite credit, she was handling this dog-and-pony show better than she was. Maybe it came with age, or maybe it was just that the best antidote for panic in a crisis was iron politeness.

Either way, the old woman sat with all the dignity and bearing of a judge at his court, withered hands clasped in her lap, and her thin lips pressed together in a smile so subtle it may as well have been invisible.

"You wouldn't like a cup of tea while we wait?" the police commissioner asked for perhaps the third time in the last four minutes, fat fingers dancing around the industry-standard kettle on his desk.

Amphitrite narrowed her eyes, "Commissioner Ratcliffe, I am on edge enough without the tea. No thank you."

Ratcliffe bowed his head in deference, smiling a red, gummy smile. Celeste dealt with this sort of bounder all the time at work; she figured they could slither their way anywhere they pleased, even into law enforcement. Not exactly a comforting thought, but she was glad to see Ratcliffe clearly wasn't spending her taxpayer dollars on his own dental plan.

"Are you sure I can't be in there with him?" Celeste nodded her head toward the little window in the office, which looked out to the dispatch area and the interrogation room beyond, "If only for…moral support?"

Ratcliffe turned to her, as if surprised to remember she was there, "I assure you, Ma'am, your son will only be asked the relevant questions. We rarely cross examine witnesses, and never children." He shook his head decisively, thick locks of greasy black hair trailing across his forehead as he did so, "Never."

Celeste wasn't at all satisfied with that answer, but figured she wouldn't get anywhere by pressing it. She met Amphitrite's eyes, and the old woman nodded sharply but decisively at her, squeezing her hand as if for comfort.

 _Look at yourself, sitting here and playing the victim. It's not_ your _child that's gone missing, you know. You should be the strong one._

But she was out of her depth here, Celeste knew that. She could handle football practice and fights and girl trouble and schoolwork, but a police interrogation? A missing person?

Just a few days ago things had been so normal, even boring, and now…

"We've got Sunny's statement!" the door opened a crack, and a perky brunette in a much-loved but quite unkempt uniform poked her head in.

Ratcliffe's syrupy smile vanished without a trace. Slowly and deliberately, he rapped his knuckles twice on his desk.

Abashed, the woman knocked twice on the open door before striding in, a folder of freshly printed paper in hand.

"Here you go, Comish," she set the folder on the desk, looking at Celeste with a reassuring smile, "You've got a really sweet kid, by the way. Handled questioning like a champ."

Celeste felt the air leave her lungs in a long sigh, as though she'd been holding her breath for hours without realizing it.

"Thank you," she said, "We're just glad we could help."

Ratcliffe was looking the transcripts up and down. Perhaps aware of how fixatedly Amphitrite was staring at him, he cleared his throat with much commotion and said, "An excellent first step. Yes, your boy's statement can at least help us with a timeline of the events of last night. It's good we were able to catch this so soon after the fact… It ought to be far more difficult for them to cover their tracks in twenty-four hours…"

"They?" Amphitrite echoed, "Who are 'they', Commissioner?" she looked from Ratcliffe to the woman, "I wasn't aware this had suddenly become a case of foul play."

Ratcliffe's face took on that trapped look of one who has said too much. Her closed the folder and licked at his lips, "Well, that is to say…"

"No point sweeping it under the rug, Comish," said the woman.

Ratcliffe looked at her venomously, and she hastily added, "All due respect. But the D.A.'s office already phoned us in about the connection, and the kid's story is the best lead we've had in months."

"I'm not exactly following," said Celeste.

"Never fear, I don't think the commissioner is, either." Said Amphitrite, not looking away from Ratcliffe.

The Commissioner, for his part, seemed to be struggling to maintain his composure, and a thin bead of sweat had begun forming on his brow, "What the District Attorney believes, Detective Kisaragi, is of no consequence to this office."

Detective Kisaragi shrugged, "She's made it her consequence, Comish, and she thinks this case it connected. If you want my opinion, it really could be."

Ratcliffe sighed, scratching the bridge of his nose. Amphitrite, who had been very solemn and quiet, said, "Are you talking about that missing schoolteacher from Traverse?"

"Yes, Ma'am," said the detective before Ratcliffe could open his mouth, "And that librarian from Twilight…"

"And a soup kitchen worker," added Celeste, remembering, "I remember, it was in the paper a few days ago. She went home from her shift and nobody knows what happened to her after that."

It had been talk of the backroom at work. Aerith and the missing girl had been in the same Poly Sci class, and Cid had taken it as an excellent opportunity to lecture the wait staff on the importance of carrying a can of pepper spray about at all times, as a pretty young woman could never be too careful, even in a neighborhood like theirs.

"You mean to tell me that my granddaughter has been abducted by…by some sort of professional kidnapping ring?"

"Merely a theory at present, my dear lady," said Ratcliffe.

"A pretty good theory," added Detective Kisaragi.

"We must, of course, explore every avenue that is open to us. If indeed your granddaughter has been taken, you can rest easy knowing that we shall do all in our power to…"

"Ha!" Amphitrite barked dryly, enough to hush Ratcliffe up at once, "That schoolteacher has been missing for half a year, for all your efforts." She got to her feet, not with the slow ease Celeste normally associated with her, but with a sudden ferocity that brought Celeste up as well, if only to make sure she didn't fall over and bust a hip or something.

"I admit I don't know very much about how all this works, and I don't mean to judge your opinion," Celeste spoke to Detective Kisaragi instead of Ratcliffe, largely because she'd actually moved forward to help her steady Amphitrite on her feet.

"But aren't we forgetting about the other boy, Riku? He's Sora's age, he can't be involved in some kind of _kidnapping_ operation…"

"Who says he can't?" said the detective matter-of-factly, "Wouldn't be the first time a kid worked the wrong side of the law to supplement his allowance. And your son says he'd been stalking Kairi for a while before."

The thought made Celeste shiver involuntarily. Maybe she was naïve, but she couldn't conceive a world where a boy barely older than her own son could kidnap a girl for profit, or for pleasure. But Celeste was older than that, and she knew such things were possible, that age did not necessitate innocence.

She tried to imagine Kairi walking home late at night, wrapped up in her own thoughts, those same surprising but ferocious bursts of emotion her grandmother affected so well. She thought of footsteps on the pavement, seeming to come from in front of her and from behind her at once.

Maybe Kairi hadn't noticed it at first, maybe she hadn't realized something was wrong until _he_ had appeared in front of her, maybe wrapped his arms around her, that unusual silver hair obscuring his face. Kairi may not even have had the energy to scream before he'd pressed his hand to her mouth, picked her up, maybe even pressed his lips to hers, so she couldn't cry out in terror…

"I'd thank you, Detective," said Ratcliffe with slow deliberation, "to please keep the speculation of this case out of the discussion in the present company. There is no use in starting a trail of paranoia and panic before we have even begun to…"

"I can't speak for paranoia, Commissioner," said Amphitrite, "But I'm panicking enough already, so you can rest easy about frightening me into a fit. Still, I can tell when I'm not wanted."

She collected her coat and handbag from her chair, "Rest assured I will be back, so let's have no delusions about keeping me out of the loop. If you discover anything, _anything_ at all, I believe I have a right to know it."

"Yes, of course, Madame, certainly…" began Ratcliffe, lumbering to his feet with a huffing and puffing like an old locomotive engine, "…if you will permit me to escort you…"

"I do know my way to the front door, thank you," said Amphitrite, putting a hand on Celeste's arm to guide her out alongside, "You may recall my husband's name hangs over it."

Celeste wasn't entirely sure, but she could have sworn Detective Kisaragi guffawed as they left the room.

"A circus, a self-serving circus," Amphitrite muttered as they crossed the dispatch office, "The man's a trained monkey, but I'd wager he has more lice."

Celeste couldn't argue with that, but she didn't believe it would be in the old woman's best interest to stay on this distressing tack much longer, "I think you've put them on their toes well enough." She smiled, "Your name still holds weight around here."

"At the risk of sounding immodest, it could stand to hold a little bit more. Ratcliffe would still be sitting in a basement office filing accident reports if it weren't for…"

"Mom, Gran!" Sora bounded up to them, having apparently been sitting on a bench just out of Celeste's line of sight.

Celeste was relieved to see he looked alright. Maybe a little pale, but no more shaken than he'd been this morning. Before she knew what she was doing, she had wrapped her arms around him.

"Ack, Mom, it's alright..." Sora began, but he didn't push her off, "It was just a few questions..."

"We're told you handled it 'like a champ'," commented Amphitrite, "I take that to mean you are either excellently suited for questioning, or these police are just very easily intimidated."

Sora looked at Amphitrite, and the guilt in his face was enough to make Celeste defensive. Before she could say anything, however, Sora said, "Gran, I…I'm really sorry. I know…I know I should have taken better care of her."

"Sora, my granddaughter is a girl, not a goldfish," said Amphitrite mildly, "And, whether I like it or not, she is as willful as anybody else in my family. There was nothing you can do, so I would stop believing there was."

She straightened up, "I'd better be off for home. Thank you, Celeste, for calling me. I promise to keep in touch…"

"Amphitrite," Celeste began, putting her hand on the old woman's shoulder, "You shouldn't be alone, not with all this going on…"

"I can manage very well, Celeste, thank you," said Amphitrite solidly, already making for the door, "I will let you know if anything arises."

Celeste took a step forward, prepared to call out again, but she stopped sighing dejectedly.

She was aware of Sora beside her, shifting nervously from foot to foot, "She thinks it's all my fault, doesn't she? She says she doesn't, but that's just so I don't feel bad."

"She doesn't think that at all. She's just frightened about Kairi; probably she doesn't want _us_ to feel bad for her."

Celeste wrapped her arm around Sora's shoulder, moving slowly to the door with him, "Some adults…" she corrected herself quickly, reminding herself of just how old Sora was, "…some _people_ think it's easier on others if they don't let on when they're upset or scared." She looked closely at Sora, meeting his eyes, "They want others to see that they're strong, and they're in control because they don't want to be seen as helpless or weak."

They had reached the doorway now, looking out into the quiet parking lot and the crisp sunny breeziness of the afternoon.

At last Sora said, "Are you trying to tell me something?"

"What if I am?"

"Nothin'," Sora began to walk across the parking lot, hands shoved in the pockets of his shorts, the wind rustling his hair and causing the dogtag around his neck to list to-and-fro in front of him, "Just that you may want to take your own advice."

Despite herself, Celeste laughed, shaking her head.

"They'll find Kairi," said Sora with a sureness he hadn't possessed this morning, "They've got to. And if they don't…" he trailed off.

"If they don't?"

" _I_ will," with the same iron determination she'd so often seen in him, that ferocity that both impressed and frightened her, "Maybe there _was_ nothing I could do then, but there's gotta be something I can do now."

He continued on to where she'd parked the car. Celeste pressed her lips together and followed him, thinking of Ratcliffe's empty promises, of half a dozen kidnapped women, and of the lurking shade of the boy Sora had just met and already hated more than he'd ever hated anybody.

Any thoughts she'd had of telling him about what had transpired in her meeting with Ratcliffe dissipated then, as she watched him march over to her minivan, proud and stringent as a boy going off to war.

* * *

"Someone's here for you, Ax!" called Flynn from the main room.

"Bit busy!" Axel called back, giving the wizened old man in the chair a thumbs-up for confidence.

"Your funeral, man! Guy's got a badge."

"One second," Axel told his customer, putting the tattoo gun down next to the stencil he'd been using (an inverted corkscrew; Axel hadn't thought to ask this guy the significance) and stepping out into the main waiting area.

Flynn was lounging on the worn leather sofa on the room's right side, fingers playing slowly around his earrings, legs propped up on a nearby steamer trunk which doubled as a coffee table. He gave Axel an appraising look and a shrug as he walked in, nodding over to the aforementioned badge-carrier, who was standing over the template booklet, flipping with mild interest through several hundred tattoos designs, most of which Axel had never used and nobody ever asked for.

"Hey, Moonboy," Axel began with a cautious smile, "What brings you to my neck of the woods?"

Saix closed the booklet and surveyed Axel. The ghost of a smile Axel had become used to seeing on him in their short re-acquaintanceship was nowhere to be found this time. It was a flat expression, a _cop's_ expression. Tactical, serious and unyielding.

"Is there some place where we can talk?" he asked, "Alone."

With the aid of an ink-pen, Flynn pointed Saix to a door in the corner, painted in a peeling shade of silver, mostly obscured by an equally peeling poster of an obscure glam rock band.

"Come with me," Saix told Axel, already moving toward the door. Feeling a vague knot of worry in his gut, Axel followed, looking once over his shoulder to spot the squad car double parked (it was always the cops who got away with this stuff) outside.

There was another officer sitting at the wheel, Axel saw. Maybe feeling his eyes on him, the guy looked up and Axel saw the scar on his face.

Before Flynn had converted his aunt's apartment into a tattoo parlor, the stockroom had been a linen closet. There were still bottles of fabric softener shoved in a crawlspace beneath the lowest shelf, right next to cans of paint, ink, spare bolts and screws for piercings and everything else a would-be person-painter needed to get by.

Saix looked around the room, his gaze stopping very briefly on a rack of body piercings shaped like the celestial bodies. There was a lone sunburst hanging limply off the side of the rack, swaying back and forth from the tiny effort of their entrance.

"What's wrong? Saix, what's going on?" began Axel, leaning reflexively against an overflowing box of numbing agent.

"You went back to work right away," Saix commented, slowly taking his attention away from the sunburst to look at him.

"Let it never be said that I don't work for a living. I thought you'd already pegged me as on the path to self-improvement."

"We've been looking for you, Axel. We tried your apartment first…"

"We? What, you and Leon, or Squall or whatever Sourpuss's name is? Why does he hate me, again?"

"He has it out for bikers," commented Saix with a faint trace of humor.

"But not defectors from the Brotherhood of Motorheads? You two seem to get on just fine. He your partner or something? Bet he's the bad cop."

"Go easy on him, okay? He let me come along with him today, and I wasn't supposed to."

Axel felt his smile fading. He hated that feeling, that involuntary sinking you get when all attempts to make the situation a joke fall flatter than the Nebraska prairie.

"What do you mean? I haven't done something wrong, have I? Look, here I am, working, ain't skipping bail or running off to Mexico or anything like that…"

"It's not like that, Axel. We don't need you."

"Story of my life," Axel quipped.

There was an unusual kind of sadness in Saix's face. He had wrapped his arms around himself, as though cold. Axel noticed, suddenly, that the sleeves of his sweater were a little too long than he needed, the blue cuffs coming up over his wrists to obscure his hands.

"We're looking for Riku, and we figured you might know where he is."

"Riku? What happened to him, what do you want him for?" he stepped forward, looking at Saix's cold, impassive face and finally having enough, "Dammit, Saix, what did he do?"

"You don't need to know that." Saix said automatically.

"The hell I don't! Saix, Riku's my friend, he bailed me out last night, if he's in some kind of trouble I think I damn well have a right to know…"

"He's missing, alright?" said Saix, lowering his arms to his side. Axel wasn't sure if it was his imagination, or if he was purposefully moving to stand in front of the door, the only exit, "We know he bailed you out, we were wondering if you know where he went after that."

Did Axel know? Part of him wanted to laugh and another part wanted to kick something. Riku at the bus station, Riku yelling at him, blaming him while not blaming him, leaving him sitting there as he walked off into the night.

His friend…

"No idea, okay?" said Axel, "He went home, I guess. He wasn't exactly keen on my company."

"We tried his place. No sign of him, no forced entry. His au pair's gone too, we think on some extended European vacation."

"She's never around," said Axel, "Riku's eighteen now, it's not like he can't take care of himself." He slid down a little, coming to a sitting position on a crate of old cassette tapes.

"Did you say forced entry?" He looked up at Saix, feeling like a child being chastised, "Saix, look, you have to believe me, I don't know where the hell Riku is or what happened to him but, hey, you're scaring _me_ now." Almost beseechingly, he asked, "What did Riku do?"

For a whole brief moment in time, Saix's face softened, the cold inscrutability melting away to an expression of pity and concern. For that one half a minute, he was Moonboy again, pulling Axel aside to tell him he was going to get them both killed one day, that he was an irresponsible jackass with no filter, and that he was still the best damn friend he'd ever had.

"We think he's connected in the disappearance of a girl at his high school. He was stalking her, and we have an eyewitness account that placed him and the girl close to each other last night before they both disappeared."

"A girl…" Axel began, remembering Riku's sulks and silences. The sudden shift in his schedule the past few weeks, how he had even allowed Axel to hang onto Betty an extra few days in his preoccupation.

He'd asked Riku what was going on, and gotten no reply.

"Saix, you don't think…"

"There's evidence, Axel, and you can't ignore evidence, especially not when it's the only evidence you have."

He reached out a tentative hand, and put it on Axel's shoulder, not quite as firmly as an old friend ought, but enough so that Axel could feel his hand, surprisingly cold against the skin not covered by his tanktop.

"I'm sorry for worrying you. I just figured…you'd better hear it from me than…"

"You don't have to say sorry," said Axel, remembering Riku, how he was sick of sorrys, of apologies. Axel was getting sick of them too, hearing them and making them.

"Riku's not a kidnapper, Saix, he doesn't follow girls around. You met him, did he _look_ like some sex-crazy maniac to you?"

Saix had no answer to that. Axel continued, "We've been friends for years, do you really think I'd have spent my time with someone like…"

"I think we both know you haven't always been the best at reading people, Axel," said Saix firmly, taking his hand from Axel's shoulder.

Axel got to his feet and, before Saix could move to react, grabbed for his arm, pulling him by the hand so that he almost fell over, and rolling his right sleeve back to expose the tanned skin of his wrist, over the pulse point.

"And you're just as good a judge as I am, right Moonboy?" asked Axel softly, his finger tracing the faded outline of a crescent moon, throbbing quickly and imperceptibly beneath his fingertips.

Saix pulled his hand free, breathing deeply and quickly, his face contorted in an expression of anger Axel hadn't thought to see on him ever again.

He rolled the sleeve back down, and Axel noticed his eyes flicking quickly to Axel's own exposed wrist, almost as though ashamed to be caught in the act.

"Still plain as day," Axel told him, holding his wrist up to expose the red-orange sunburst, vivid as the day it had been inked.

They could have stood there, staring at each other with open hostility for hours, Axel felt, and never notice that time had moved. But the door opened, like a curtain call at the end of a play, and there stood Detective Squall Leonhart, looking from one to the other of them with his usual harried imperviousness.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said not sounding sorry at all, "But we've found him."

"Riku?" prompted Axel, lowering his arm and already moving to the door.

"Riku," repeated Squall, gesturing for Saix to follow him, "Come on, we'd better get back."

He was already out the door, not looking back once to see that Saix was following him. Saix was, but he paused in the doorway, and turned to look at Axel, no more pity or empathy, and yet none of that cold cop-like detachment.

Only later would Axel realize it was hatred.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks for reading! Chapter 5 is currently scheduled for next Friday, August 19.

See you then!


	5. The Storm

Chapter 5, The Storm

 **A/N:** And...we're back!

Thanks to Is Og Ild for reviewing! I can promise more than a few more twists and turns as the plot goes on. Some of them may even surprise _me_.

I had a blast writing this chapter, and I think it's my favorite one so far. Enjoy!

* * *

The tape made a soft and steady thrumming noise as it ran, revolving in close circles, occasionally emitting a quick click, as the two voices wafted out through the speakers, distorted but not distractingly so.

"You always liked motorcycles?" Yuffie, polite and sweet. Squall could picture her leaning over the table, head in her hands, as if the stony-faced kid she was speaking to was the most fascinating person she'd ever met.

"Yeah," Riku, low and without inflection. If Squall hadn't cuffed him to the table himself, he'd have imagined him crossing his arms in the staunch defiance of a child, "But I don't see what that has to do with anything."

To the left of Squall, Ratcliffe snorted in displeasure, chewing on the tip of a ballpoint pen. Like Squall, he had a writing tablet in front of him, but so far he'd jotted down nothing short of the date and what looked like a sketch of the week's weather forecast.

"Just wanted to get to know you better," Yuffie continued, "I know a thing or two about bikes myself. What's your model?"

On Squall's right, District Attorney Octavia Hartford rolled her eyes as she took quick, purposeful notes. Her writing was too small even for Squall to make out, and she'd already covered half the page.

Silly as she may look in her gaudily colored blouse and heart-patterned cardigan, the D.A was an indomitable woman, and a force to be reckoned with at the best of times. Squall had only met her twice before, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she hated him for some reason.

Yuffie and Riku had moved on, probably after reaching an impasse in the bike talk, "You rode your bike out to the Overlook last night?"

"It wasn't there when you guys picked me up, was it?"

"Just checking. So you walked?"

"…yeah." a soft thumping, maybe Riku moving in his chair, "I wanted some space."

"On your own?"

"Yeah."

"Needed time to sort out your emotions, is that it? I get it; it can be tough keeping things together. It's good to get some fresh air, clear your head…"

"She sounds half ready to spread her goddamn legs for the kid!" said Hartford, setting down her pen in disgust, "This is getting us nowhere."

"Detective Kisaragi is a strong defender of the 'soft touch' approach, Madame District Attorney," drawled Ratcliffe, "Developing a rapport with the suspect before going in for the kill." he sniffed dismissively, "As it were."

"This one could do with a swift kick in the pants, never mind a soft touch," insisted Hartford, "Classic privileged rich kid, thinks the rules don't apply to him, that this is all some game. We're not a pack of goddamn therapists, we're trying to get something _accomplished_ here! At least, I am."

"Now, Octavia, I do object…"

Hartford rounded on Squall before Ratcliffe could finish his defense, "Why not send this one in? He knows the type, has experience on his side. Make the toe rag squirm."

"I don't make people squirm, District Attorney," said Squall bluntly, "…that's just an accidental side effect."

"Save the jokes for Happy Hour, Detective," said Hartford, tapping an insistent finger on the tape recorder, "For the love of Christ, she's telling him about her volleyball team!"

Squall almost told her that it wasn't a joke and that Yuffie's volleyball story had so far managed to get at least one full confession out of somebody (drug smuggling, incidentally, but that's neither here nor there), but he figured if he wanted his career prospects to continue being prospects he'd be better off just complying.

It was easy to play off the Commissioner like a patsy, but there wasn't a cop in Radiant County with the balls to talk back to D.A Hartford. She was nicknamed the Executioner for a reason.

"We need a timeframe, Detective," Ratcliffe reminded him unnecessarily, "I don't care how shaky an estimate, so long as we can commit him to _a_ time."

"Easier if kids still wore watches," grumbled Hartford, "Or if they told the truth, but we're not living in a fantasy world."

Squall nodded at his two superiors, getting up and crossing to the interrogation room door. He knocked on it, quick smart taps.

He heard Yuffie through the door, "Sit tight," and the sound of her footsteps. He hoped that didn't mean she'd uncuffed the kid or something. Sure, Yuffie liked to believe the best in people, but this Riku kid looked pretty sturdy, all things considered. Quick as Yuffie was, Squall wasn't sure about her odds against an angry, desperate suspect.

The door opened a crack and Yuffie looked out, "Can't this wait, Squall? I'm kinda busy."

"I'm supposed to relieve you," Squall told her, "D.A's orders."

"What? Did I do something wrong?"

Squall shook his head, "Fat chance; she just wants us to try something different."

Yuffie sighed, but Squall could see the compliment had gone straight to her head, "Alright. I think I've buttered him up for you, anyway."

As she went out the door, she stopped at Squall's side and whispered, "Try not to go _too_ hard on him, okay? Seems like his heart's in the right place."

Squall nodded but gave no further comment than that. How Yuffie, who wasn't exactly new to this process, could sling judgements on the strength of a suspect's character after one conversation boggled the mind.

As he walked into the interrogation room, however, he felt maybe he shouldn't be so surprised. Riku sat at the table, leaning in his seat with a curious sort of agitation. Not the usual kind of 'caged beast' anxiety he'd often seen in suspects, but a more nervous sort of impatience. He was tapping his foot on the floor, the worn sole of his combat boot making a steady cadence on the tiles.

His face was difficult to read, as impassive as it had been when Squall had spotted him in dispatch last night, yet even his expression wasn't entirely exempt from the working of his nerves. He looked flushed beneath that cool composure. Angry, maybe, or scared.

Squall would make it his job to figure out which.

"You know who I am?" asked Squall, approaching the chair Yuffie had vacated, and leaning against it.

"This some kind of trick question?" Riku was looking past him, to the door, maybe wondering what had happened to Yuffie. Hell, maybe she had struck up a bond with him after all.

"I don't play tricks."

"You're Squall Leonhart."

At last, Riku looked at the scar. Squall wouldn't have noticed had it not been for the pointed aversion he'd been acting upon. They were all like that, anybody who knew the story, who knew the scar, they treated it like it was some kind of bad omen, or else a good luck charm, something you couldn't look at too long without going blind. Like the sun.

"I am," Squall nodded, "How long have you been riding with the Earthshakers?"

"About two years."

"Two years… And when exactly did they tell you about me?"

Riku looked for an instant as if he didn't get it. Then he answered, hesitantly, "About a week in."

"Who told you? Your friend, Axel?"

Riku grimaced, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Did he tell you?"

Riku's free hand toyed with the chain-links of his hand-cuff, "You're kind of a hero to him. He thinks you're this big badass who doesn't give a shit what anybody thinks so long as he gets what he wants." He smiled, a glint of wolfish teeth, "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Axel thinks I'm a hero, does he?" Squall laughed, a hollow, short laugh, "He doesn't know a thing about me. I'm just some campfire story they tell the new kids."

He'd never thought of it that way before. Now that it had occurred to him, Squall didn't know what to make of it. The way Axel had acted around him yesterday, Squall had just thought it was some stupid joke, one of the acts Saix was always going on about. To think people over there _idolized_ him…

Looking at the tape recorder on the table, Squall reminded himself why he was here and who was listening. He had a job to do, a suspect to question, an innocent girl to find.

"I've been wondering something…" he continued, "Why would a rich high school kid join up with the likes of the Earthshakers? Axel behind that one too?"

"Maybe I just wanted to join up on my own," said Riku, "I'd already had my bike for a few months, Axel was always telling stories about riding with the Shakers, so…"

"'Maybe' isn't an answer. He talked you into it?"

Riku scowled, "Axel doesn't talk me into anything. Usually, I'm talking him _out of_ things."

"Usually, but not then. Don't lie to me."

"Fine. He'd already been with the Shakers a few years, so he helped me join up."

"Probably told you how great it was, how freeing. Stories about brotherhood, and community, and adventures. A cure-all for loneliness. Sound familiar?"

Riku lowered his head, still tapping his foot on the floor, the steady thumps sounding like heartbeats in the silence of the rest of the room.

"Well?" Squall prompted, "Did you get your brotherhood?" He leaned over onto the table, tips of his fingers just a fraction of an inch away from Riku's cuffed hand.

"I didn't join for 'brotherhood'," said Riku at last, a note of defiance creeping back into his voice.

"So I guess you weren't disappointed."

Squall could imagine the others sitting around the table in the room outside, listening to the recorder, Ratcliffe occasionally standing up to peer at the security monitor and see just what was going on.

He reflected Hartford would be pleased with him, glad that Squall had managed to put the kid on the defensive, trap him in a corner. Squall would be lying if he said there wasn't a part of him that relished it too: that interminable hold over a suspect, that mounting unease, agitation and panic.

But he never enjoyed it, and he didn't think he ever would. This wasn't the kind of thing you were supposed to enjoy, however often you did it.

"This girl, Kairi," Squall continued, "You paid a visit to her friend's house last night, around a quarter to midnight." It wasn't a question, they already had the facts on _that_ chapter.

"I did." Riku sounded softer, tired. His keen eyes looking less feline, less predatory.

"Why?"

"To apologize. I never meant to scare Kairi, and I…I felt bad about that car accident."

"You weren't driving the car."

"I know! I mean…I didn't want them to think I had it out for them."

"You don't?"

"No!" Riku may have noticed that he'd yelled that, and shrank back in his chair, "Following Kairi…it was stupid. I shouldn't've done it."

 _Might as well be reciting a script; no Oscars in his future._

"Why did you?"

"I…" Riku trailed off, his voice sounding suddenly dry.

"She was pretty, wasn't she?" asked Squall softly. Riku looked up at him, brow crinkled in confusion, "…what?"

"Pretty, popular, never gave you the time of day. But she was perfect, to you. That kind of girl doesn't want a damn thing to do with the Earthshakers. You're a blip on her radar, at best."

He leaned back over the table, watching Riku move back in his chair, "But an Earthshaker doesn't take no for an answer. An Earthshaker takes what he wants, no matter what the cost. Axel told you that too, right?"

Riku's eyes traced the scar, again. Always the scar, but hell if he knew the rest of it.

"You followed her, waiting for the day when she would follow you back. Because girls really _do_ like that kind of guy, right? All they need is some convincing, some mystery, some adventure. And she followed you back… And now she's gone, and you're here."

"I already told your friend," began Riku, "I didn't know Kairi followed me. I went up to the Overlook and I was there all night… I had no idea she was gone until you people showed up."

Squall laughed bitterly, "So you did, and my friend believed you. I'm not her. I know what you are, I know where you come from, I know what people like you do to girls like Kairi." He stepped back from the table, "And I know when a guy's lying."

Squall returned to the anteroom, where he was promptly bombarded by Yuffie, "The hell was that?" she asked shrilly, which Squall knew to mean she wasn't properly angry with him, "I _believed_ him? I never said that…"

"He doesn't know that." Squall looked past her to where Ratcliffe sat, looking at him with mild approval.

"There wasn't much of a timeline."

"He isn't going to give one. The way he tells it, he reached the Overlook at around twelve and stayed there until afternoon."

"Stupidest alibi I ever heard," commented Hartford, taking a cigarette from her voluminous magenta handbag and lighting it.

"Octavia!" began Ratcliffe, "We do not smoke in this station..."

"Tell it to your dentist," Hartford commented, puffing smoke in the general direction of Ratcliffe's tobacco-brown teeth.

"Yeah, it's a stupid alibi," continued Yuffie, "Doesn't that mean it's more likely to be true?"

"I thought you didn't believe him." Said Squall.

"I'm playing devil's advocate. Wouldn't an _intelligent_ kidnapper make sure to be surrounded by his biker buddies or something right after committing the crime? Say what you want about him, Riku's not an idiot."

"Could be a double bluff," commented Ratcliffe, "Use an unrealistic alibi so we are more likely to assume he's telling the truth."

"I don't know, it stinks to me," continued Yuffie.

"It ain't exactly fruity tooty for me, either, Detective," said Hartford, "It's not _your_ office on the line."

"He comes from a wealthy background, does well in school, criminal record's almost spotless compared to his biker friends…"

"Everybody starts somewhere," said Hartford, "One look at that kid and I knew we're dealing with a massive ego case. Wants to prove himself, probably gets a rush off it." She took another drag on her cig, "And there's the Earthshaker connection. This whole goddamn county's been a battleground for motorcycle thugs for _years_."

"Every gang is different," said Squall, "Say what you like about them, Destiny Chapter never had anything to do with sex trade."

"Again, there's a first time for everything," said Hartford.

"We don't even know if this has anything to do with sex trade!" said Yuffie, "We can barely connect this to the other missing women."

"I wouldn't get ahead of myself, Detective," Hartford leaned against the file cabinet, her face suffused with the undisguised pride of one about to discuss their favorite subject, "Five girls missing before this one. Each of them last seen sometime between eleven and midnight, all in residential districts, never a sign of a kidnapper. This Earthshaker connection is the best we have."

"Because it's _all_ we have!" said Yuffie, frustrated, turning to Squall, "Come on, Squall, you talked to him. Forget his alibi, forget his stupid friend, forget whatever bonehead teenage drama that started all this… That kid is not a kidnapper."

She looked so pitifully desperate, Squall thought, a way Yuffie ought never to look. He wondered about that kid, about Riku, and how he could influence people. Be it his mystery, his bike, his whole 'stubborn teen rebel' aesthetic, Squall didn't know.

But he knew that look in Yuffie's eyes; he'd seen in before, and that was enough to be certain about Riku.

"Kidnapper or no," Squall said, "He's a liar. He may have been alone at the Overlook when we brought him in, but he wasn't alone when he got there."

* * *

Aerith could manage to look like a princess no matter what she was doing, Celeste thought. Standing at the sink, shoulders high and voice tender and soft, you almost forgot she was up to her elbows in filthy water, scouring dishes.

" _A song of love is a sad song, hi lili, hi lili, hi lo. A song of love is a song of woe, don't ask me how I know_ …"

As she sorted the already dried dishes in the cupboard, Celeste found herself inexplicably singing along, " _A song of love is a sad song. For I have loved and it's so. I sit at the window and watch the rain. Hi lili, hi lili, hi lo._ "

Interestingly, it _was_ raining; a steady autumnal cloudburst that clattered against the windows of the kitchen, like the most monotonous background track in existence.

Aerith turned to look at her, her face flushed from effort and the azaleas in her hair hanging a little lopsided off her bun.

"You're very good," she told Celeste.

"I used to sing that one for Sora, when he was really little," Celeste explained, "Got him to sleep, every time."

"You should sing around here; people will love it."

"Don't waste your time, Princess, I've been telling her that for years," Cid entered from the main room, his apron stained in all the primary colors and some of the secondary ones, wiping sweat from his brow.

"I wouldn't want to steal your audience, Aerith," said Celeste, looking scoldingly at Cid, "And would you please stop badgering me about it? I don't like crowds."

"You work the lunch rush well enough," commented Cid, but he was good enough not to press the issue further

He sat at the little table near the freezer, looking around, "Speaking of serenading serving wenches, where'd Tiana get off to? She's got the lockup shift tonight, don't she?"

"She has an audition with a nightclub in Traverse tomorrow morning," said Aerith, not looking back from her work, "I figured I'd take over for her."

"See, Cel, didn't I tell ya this one's too nice for her own good?"

"There's no harm in little acts of kindness, Cid," said Celeste, "It was a very noble thing Aerith did."

"Hmph. She shouldn't be out alone at night anyway. Destiny ain't as safe as it used to be." He paused, looking at Celeste with what she figured must be guilt, "Sorry, Cel."

"Nothing to be sorry about, it's not like you're wrong." She noticed Aerith had slackened by the sink, slowly scrubbing at an already cleaned pot, her eyes wide.

"Aerith, honey, I'm sure Tiana will be fine," Celeste went over to her, patting her gently on the shoulder, "It's not like she's helpless."

But that only reminded her of Amphitrite and her insistence that Kairi wasn't helpless either. She looked at Cid imploringly, silently beseeching ' _Do something!_ '

Looking chastened, Cid sighed, "Aw, Aerith, I didn't mean to spook you, or anything. Besides, Tiana knows what she's doing, and she'll be taking the train. Worse that can happen there is she'll get mugged. Nobody ever got kidnapped riding a packed subway car…"

He stopped short, sighed, and got up, taking a set of keys out of his pocket. In the same fluid motion as a magician pulls a rabbit from a hat, Cid opened a small glass-fronted cabinet above the meat locker and produced a bottle of scotch whiskey and three shot glasses, which he brought back to the table.

"Come on," he told them, "Sit down, the boss commands it."

Aerith turned off the taps, looking uncomprehendingly at the setup. Celeste, however, smiled reassuringly, and led her over to the table, pulling out a chair for her to sit down in.

"Seems to me we could all do with some liquid motivation."

"What about the dishes?" asked Aerith.

"The dishes can go fuck themselves," Cid told her amicably, "If they want a drink, we can pour some leftovers down the drain after."

"I'm driving home tonight, Cid," Celeste reminded him, "I can't think what Sora would say if _I_ got myself into a car accident."

" _Phsh_ ," Cid shook his head, masterfully pouring into each of their glasses, "If you need to, I'll drive you home. 'Sides, it's not like you can't hold your liquor, Cel."

Aerith looked questioningly at the both of them, a puzzled smile forming on her face, "Am I missing something, here?"

"A long story, which Cid does not need to tell you." Celeste told her, smiling warningly at Cid.

"Point taken," he conceded, leaning back in his chair.

Noting Aerith's obvious reticence over her drink, Celeste looked at her encouragingly and picked up the glass, taking a quick shot. The spirit (Cid's own pride and joy, the last survivor from the restaurant's first year) was warm and comforting; she felt as though the heaps of tension that had been heaped on her the past few days were melting away.

Aerith, following suit, took a sip of her own and promptly began to cough and splutter.

"You alright?" asked Celeste patting Aerith on the back and trying not to laugh for her sake.

Aerith nodded, smiling through sparkling eyes, "Yeah…yeah, I'm fine. Just takes some getting used to, I guess."

"Best thing is to get a taste for it early," said Cid, taking a swift shot of his own, "It's like riding a bike."

They sat like this for some time, the rain rebounding off the windows, cascading drips making the whole street outside a surreal blur.

Celeste looked at her watch once, just to judge the time. Half past ten; had Cid's not been so dead tonight, she'd probably still be out waiting tables. There was no real need to hurry home…Sora wouldn't worry, and he wouldn't want her to rush.

 _Because he doesn't want you to know how much he's hurting_ , she told herself again, _Why encourage that behavior?_

The same behavior that Sora had only today accused Celeste of having. Well, not accused; hinted, maybe.

"Aerith," she said, "What you said last night…about how people hide their emotions to keep people from worrying… That was spot on."

"What do you girls talk about when I'm not around?" asked Cid.

"All the silly things guys do without realizing it," quipped Aerith, clearly getting used to the scotch. She turned to Celeste, "Sora, right?"

"I can't tell if he's angry, scared, or desperate, just that he's feeling very strongly about this. He feels strongly about everything"

"Yeah… Mine's like that too."

"Your what?" repeated Cid, "Princess, don't yell us you've got a nest of your own you've been keeping secret!"

Blushing, Aerith shook her head, "No, no…I didn't mean it like that. My…my guy, I mean."

"Your boyfriend?" Celeste wouldn't deny it was odd that Aerith was likening her boyfriend to her son, but maybe she had a point. Stupid as old wives' tales were, they had grains of truth in them from time to time. Men could be a lot alike; women, not so much.

"Something like that," Aerith's voice had taken on a faraway, dreamy quality, "We met in high school but…it's been complicated."

"It usually is," said Celeste, barely realizing she'd said it.

"What's he do?" asked Cid, who had apparently decided to ask the most inoffensive 'male' questions he could, probably to avoid embarrassing them all.

"That's complicated too," said Aerith, reaching up to take the flowers from her hair, letting it cascade around her waist in chestnut waves, "I haven't seen him in a while."

"Some boyfriend, then," said Cid, sotto voice. Celeste gave him a look, and he shrugged apologetically.

"He left town a few years ago, wanted to find closure."

"Closure?" Celeste asked, "What kind?"

Aerith shrugged, "He never told me. But I knew it meant the world to him, finding what he was looking for."

Celeste did understand that. Sora's tenacity, his drive, his pride and his own weird sense of honor.

"He left you behind, to go soul searching?" Cid snorted.

"He promised he'd be back someday," said Aerith.

"And you promised to wait for him," Celeste finished for her, staring into the dregs of her glass, "Right?"

Aerith nodded, slowly, "Yeah; and I have."

"And you believe he'll be back someday?"

Looking mildly offended now, Aerith replied, "…Yes, I do."

"A word of advice, Aerith," said Celeste, not bitterly, but feeling the haze of the whiskey in her system, "That's a crapshoot gamble."

"Cel," Cid said carefully, "you sure you want to go into that?"

Celeste didn't answer right away, instead speaking, more than she would otherwise have thought feasible. Maybe it was the situation, maybe it was Sora and Riku, and Kairi and Aerith's missing classmate. Maybe it was that song Aerith had been singing, and the way Sora had used to fall right asleep to it.

"I met my guy in high school, too. He was good looking, and funny, and charming… Smart, too, and romantic. My parents hated him, and my friends were jealous, but I don't think I ever really noticed that, not at the time. I loved him, you see. He was my world, corny as that sounds.

"We talked about running away together. Leaving school, leaving town and going off to see the world. Nothing in our way…" she sighed heavily, "And then I got pregnant."

Aerith shifted uncomfortably in her seat, "He left you?"

"No. He stayed by me, told me we'd raise our baby together, have a life of our own and who the hell cared what the rest of the world thought? We'd show them all. And we did. I had my son, and we scraped together for a place to live… We were just a couple of kids, raising a baby in a loft above a record store, can you get anymore cliché?"

She laughed, running her hand through her hair, "We stuck it out for a year, and then he lost his job. It was fine, I told him. I could work extra hours, find a second job…he could stay with Sora. But he was restless…he never could sit too long in one place without feeling useless. So he went out to look for a job, a better place for us."

Celeste could feel Cid watching her. He knew this story, he probably didn't like hearing it again, but she felt it needed to be told, if not for Aerith's sake than for her own.

"He left town, and I said I would wait for him, that Sora and I would be right here when he came back, to take us to our new lives. He wrote every week. Sometimes he sent pictures of the places he visited; Denver, Boulder, St. Louis, Houston… Sometimes there were little toys for Sora. I sent him pictures too. Sora's first trip to the lake, Sora's first Christmas, Sora's first steps… By the time the first year was over, he only wrote about once a month. Two years, and he wrote once every two months. He wrote only once in the third year. By the fourth, I stopped waiting for him. I couldn't wait for him, not when my son was waiting for me."

Sora, tossing and turning in his bed, woken up by thunder in the night, calling her name. The occasional question, " _Where's Daddy?_ " Her automatic answer, " _He's out there somewhere, baby. He'll be back one day, when he's ready._ "

He'd stopped asking that question quickly enough, and Celeste had been more than relieved not to answer it, but to sing him back to sleep, run her fingers through his hair.

" _Tomorrow I'll probably love again. Hi lili, hi lili, hi lo._ "

"Don't waste your life waiting, Aerith," Celeste finished, getting to her feet.

"Celeste, I…" Aerith began, standing up, swaying a little, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…

"You have nothing to be sorry for. I shouldn't have spoken so freely…it was…you were just trying to help me." She laid a careful hand on Aerith's shoulder, turning to the door, "I should probably be getting back. Sora will be… Well, he'll be waiting."

"You sure you don't want me to drive you, Cel?" asked Cid, in a rare display of genuine concern.

"No, it's fine. I'm pretty sobered up." And she found she wasn't lying about that. Her head felt clearer than it had before she'd started drinking, "But thank you. Both of you."

She started for the car, thinking of Aerith and Kairi and Sora, and of waiting, of rain, of home. Cold raindrops fell on her as she unlocked the van, and hot tears clung to her lashes for reasons she couldn't entirely name.

* * *

Riku's one phone call was brief, to the point and utterly lacking in either scorn or pity. They would 'do what they could' for him, 'in time' so long as he 'stayed put' and 'kept his head down'.

Riku kept his head up anyway, if only because the floor of this cell was covered in more muck and mystery mold than he really wanted to think about. The ceiling wasn't much better, but there was a certain relaxing calm to be found in watching the intricate spider web of cracks in the tile and guessing which parts would start leaking next.

At first the glare of the late afternoon sun through the window had been too much for him to take. Toss or turn, he could do nothing to avoid the bright obnoxious light. It started raining after the first two hours, or so, however, and the next problem became avoiding the trickle of water between the bars on the window, as they dripped down the wall and collected in an ever-growing puddle on the floor.

It was cold, too, but Riku didn't really mind that, in comparison. To keep warm, he hunched himself up on his cot, in what he supposed must look an awful lot like the fetal position; his head placed squarely over his knees, his hair falling into his face, not moving.

The accusatory stares he could deal with; he'd gotten more than his fair share over time. The mutterings about what he was and what they thought he'd done…well, that was harder, but he knew they couldn't go on thinking that. That there was no way they'd be crazy enough to actually _charge_ him with anything.

It was the confinement that got to him in the end. The dark, solid walls, the bars, the dim lights, the little window through which he could barely, just barely, glimpse the grim and gloomy sky outside.

He wasn't made for this. It was the open road for him, it always had been since long before he'd ever decided to join up with the Earthshakers. Nothing but fresh air and the wind in his face, a broad horizon everywhere he looked, and nothing to stop him but himself.

Here, however, there was nothing Riku could do but sit and think on what he'd done and what was to become of him. Funny, he'd always thought if anyone had a fair, reasoned view of themselves, it was him. Evidentially, he'd been wrong to think so.

They'd taken his watch when they brought him in, along with his lighter, his wallet and his switchblade (and a great fuss they'd made about _that_ too, as if he'd been carrying a machete in his pocket), so he had no way of telling what time it was. It was pretty dark, though, not just the foggy gray that comes with rain, but an inky-blue darkness which Riku supposed could only mean the onset of night.

How long could he be kept here without a charge? Forty-eight hours? Seventy-two? He could be here all weekend; they'd be content to leave him. Everybody here seemed to think he was guilty…hell, even Riku himself couldn't shake some feeling of culpability.

 _Stop that. Pull yourself together, alright? It isn't the same…_

A bird called outside, a high ululating shriek that directed Riku's attention away from the ceiling to the window, and the rain and wind outside.

He sighed, moving to lie down on the cot. Might as well try getting _some_ sleep, if he could…

A drop came down from the ceiling, landed wetly on his forehead. The bird shrieked again. Riku groaned in exasperation, getting to his feet. Damn, it was cold, the wind whistling through the bars of the window with an almost unrealistic, horror movie air of unease…

Another call from the bird, this time accompanied by a sharp _clang_ of something being flung against the bars. Startled, Riku stepped back, his hand going for the knife he knew wasn't there.

"Son of a bitch!" came a voice from outside, a splashing of footsteps in the pavement.

Riku approached the window, slowly, half ready to call out, just to make sure he wasn't imagining things, when a hand appeared in the window, and pushed a little plastic thermos through the bars to land neatly in Riku's hand.

"The hell…?" began Riku, but the hand in the window just gave him a 'thumbs up' before pointing insistently to the left, and then hurrying out of sight.

Something told Riku he should probably be very apprehensive about this, but the moment he picked up the thermos and noticed the little scrap of paper taped to the side, any thoughts of unease vanished at once.

" _DELIVARANCE COMES FROM ABOVE_ ", in big block letters, slightly runny from the rain.

Despite everything, Riku smiled, "Genius spelled 'deliverance' wrong."

When opened, the thermos turned out to contain a pipe cleaner, a miniature flashlight, and a rolled up piece of paper, on which was written ' _MENS BATHROOM WINDOW BROKEN LATCH_ ' in the same clumsy print.

An odd little tremor went through Riku as he read the paper, a feeling of urgency and of danger, but of purpose too. He was being offered a chance, if he only had the _cajones_ to take it.

Try as he might to stand on tiptoes and observe what was going on outside his window, he couldn't. It was, however, strangely quiet outside, apart from the storm. That, if anything, could be taken either way.

But Riku figured he might as well chance the 'better' way.

He was no stranger to lock-picking, and pipe cleaners made very good picks. Thin and flexible, so long as your fingers were nimble and practiced enough. Thankfully, the D.P.D hadn't updated their holding cells in some time, and the lock was pliable under Riku's influence. The door creaked open, the sound alarmingly loud in the silence of the cell block.

Riku tensed, expecting an alarm, a cry, a guard. Nobody came. His heart beating a dirge in his chest, Riku moved glacially from the cell, down the corridor to the door. A quick glimpse through the little window suggested that the dispatch room was empty, the lights turned down for the night.

It seemed less than unlikely that there wouldn't be at least _one_ officer on duty tonight, to watch over the suspected kidnapper, but Riku saw nobody, nary a lonely janitor to be found.

The door opened effortlessly. Presumably there was no point locking the entrance to the cell block if all the cells were locked. Still, Riku only allowed himself to open it a crack, slipping out into the larger room beyond.

Strange how much more intimidating this room was without the constant noise and bustle of people going about their business. It felt as though someone could emerge at any moment, see him escaping… And then what?

 _That's just your head talking,_ Riku told himself, stalking around the room, checking each door he passed for a label, _There's nobody here, this isn't some kind of trap. Keep it together._

The men's room was located in an out-of-the-way passage behind the water cooler. On close inspection, Riku found that the window was indeed hanging open, the small panel of grimy glass swinging back and forth in the wind.

Pocketing his new knife, Riku took a breath for fortitude, and hefted himself up through the window, the swinging panel thudding him on the back of his knee as he touched the pavement outside.

He gritted his teeth, rubbing the soreness out of his leg, at the same time feeling the coolness of the rain wash over him, his hair clinging to his forehead almost at once. It wasn't entirely silent anymore, of course. There was the rain, and the steady humming of cars going up and down the road around the other side of the station.

Yet Riku knew he was alone, unobserved, and free. But not out of the woods yet.

Taking care to keep out of the glare of the lights on the fence, Riku crossed the parking lot in quick bursts of speed, bringing memories of childhood tag, unbidden, to his mind.

 _Keep to the shadows, stay out of the light, don't let them see you or else you're out. You kinda suck at this, don't you?_

Riku liked to think his game had improved, if only just.

He reached the service driveway, which opened out onto a one-way street, more like an alley, that connected with the main avenue farther down. It was the most convenient exit, and the safest. Nobody was likely to be loitering around here at this time of night…

Riku started down the narrow alley, moving a little more freely now that he was leaving the police station behind him. He couldn't believe it, really, the rush of escape, of getting away, had clouded his senses like a warm, comforting dream…

His baby was waiting for him at the mouth of the alley. A little scratched, but none the worse for wear.

"Betty!" said Riku incredulously, approaching it with a disbelieving hesitation, not wanting to believe the smile breaking out across his face.

"Well, my man, you've finally recognized her legal name. Guess prison does give a guy some perspective."

Axel had materialized, as if from nowhere, between a dumpster and an overturned trash can. In the rain, his hair looked more black than red, and his jacket glistened with the rivulets of water running down the leather pleats.

"Ax…" Riku began, " _You_ did this?"

That cocky grin was enough to make Riku want to punch him and hug him all at once, his red-teardrops crinkling up like little grins of their own.

"Do you know anyone else with such a badass calling card?" he shrugged, "My aim could've done with a little work, I admit, but hey, at least it worked."

Riku had had no delusions, of course, the moment he'd seen the thermos pushed through the window, that it was all Axel's doing, and he figured Axel knew that.

"I don't get it… _How_?"

"There is honor among thieves, my friend, if you know the right buttons to push," Axel reached into the pocket of his jeans and took out Betty's keys, tossing them deftly to Riku, "All I did was mention my new best friend Detective Leonidas, and Seifer surrendered Betty to my tender care."

"I got the idea Leonhart hated your guts."

"He probably does, but Seifer's an idiot. He even leant me Vivi to short out the security cameras. He's good like that."

" _Vivi_?" Riku repeated.

"Beware the quiet ones. 'Sides, I'm pretty sure he's always liked me better than Seifer, but that's another story entirely."

Riku remembered Leonhart's cold, almost vengeful manner with him in interrogation.

" _Did you find your brotherhood?_ "

"Thanks, Axel. I don't know how I can ever…"

"You don't have to. You bailed me out, now I'm returning the favor. We can finally call it Even Steven."

"There's kind of a difference between bail and jailbreak, Ax," said Riku, a slow and unsteady realization coming over him, "So…you don't think I did it?"

Axel's smile faded, and when he spoke it was with a dead earnestness, "Not a chance in hell." In a somewhat lighter voice, he added, "Do you know who did, so we can bust his ass like the hot young vigilantes we are?"

Riku shook his head, feeling more gratified than he could describe, "I fucked up, Ax,"

"Don't we all?"

"No. I mean I _really_ fucked up. I shouldn't have blown up at you last night, it was…it was hypocritical of me."

"I had it coming," said Axel, with a curt nod, "Don't sugarcoat it any other way, man. I'm a hopeless goof and you can't look at a cloudy sky without thinking it's your fault. Aren't I always telling you how we balance each other out?"

Not wanting to argue (and, hell, maybe Axel was right), Riku shrugged, "I guess we do." He looked at Betty and felt that knot in his chest again.

"I guess you'd better be going, right?" asked Axel, evidently guessing what Riku was thinking, "I'd better head off too."

At which point, Riku realized fully how much Axel had taken on himself to help him. Obviously, he couldn't count on Seifer to stay quiet forever, not with all he knew about him. And, obviously, the cops knew very well about their friendship…

"Where are you going to go?" Riku asked.

"Somewhere far the hell away from here," Axel replied, "Just till this whole mess cools off. Don't worry about me."

"That'd be a first," said Riku, almost wistfully.

"So…I guess this is goodbye," Axel continued, hands back in his pockets, "Don't worry, Riku. Once the boys in blue get their heads out of their collective ass they'll figure out you're innocent. You'll be cleared, no problem."

"And what about you? Axel, you'll be jumping bail…"

"I _said_ don't worry about me," he insisted, "Please. Look, we stick up for each other, okay?" he continued, his voice charged with an emotion Riku had never heard there before, "They think we're a pair of no-good lowlifes who run down boys and kidnap girls. Well, screw them. They don't know the half of it."

Riku couldn't tell if it was the rain, but Axel's eyes seemed to be shimmering, "Ax…" Riku began, taking a tentative step forward.

Axel enveloped him in a hug before he could take another step, and for one inexplicable, confusing as all hell moment, it was nothing but the stink of cigarettes, the feel of leather, and a sound that was terrifyingly like Axel keeping in a sob.

"Take care of yourself, Riku," Axel pulled away, smiling faintly, "It's been a trip."

Riku nodded, patting Axel awkwardly on the arm, "We'll see each other again." Though he knew how dubious even he sounded.

"Yeah," Axel seemed to agree, "Um…check Betty's glovebox. I left you a little something for the road."

And, before Riku could say anything else after him, Axel had started off down the street, melting into the rain like a candle left out in the open.

"Bye Ax," Riku whispered, looking at Betty. It felt like the end of things, now. That whatever happened after this would be new and strange and frightening. The smell of menthol cigarettes still clung to his jacket, and to Betty's handlebars. No way of telling how long it would last, but Riku figured he wouldn't forget it any time soon.

As he gunned the engine and prepared to ride, he checked the glovebox for security's sake.

A bag of chips, bottle of Coke, extra lighter, a map of Radiant County, and a little Ziploc bag full of colorful foil squares.

The note attached read ' _GOOD VIBRATIONS – SOMEDAY YOU'LL THANK ME_ '.

"That son of a bitch…" he muttered, laughing.

Riku set off down the road, rain on his hair and wind in his face, refusing to look back, however much he wanted to.

* * *

Sora knew he probably shouldn't have turned on the eleven o'clock news, but he'd always been a glutton for punishment.

Marie seemed to sense this would lead to no good, and began pawing at the remote insistently, as if trying to either knock it from his hand or change it to the home-shopping network, her favorite station. Sora may have let her, exhausted and aimless as he was, had he not immediately recognized the newscast's location.

The on-seen reporter looked as though she'd gotten into a fight with a hurricane, fought valiantly, but lost anyway. Though her attention never left the camera she was speaking into, she was in a constant state of battle with her umbrella and her purple homburg hat, practically screaming to be heard.

"The situation is still ongoing here," she was saying, her prim accent sounding distressingly strained, "But it seems the escaped prisoner is, indeed, the youth arrested just today under suspicion of kidnapping a seventeen-year-old classmate…"

Sora's hand shot for the volume button, starling Marie from her comfortable ball between the remote and his thigh. The cat looked at him warily, but for once in his life, Sora had eyes only for the news.

"There have been confused reports from witnesses that the suspect fled the scene on a… _whoa_ …" with a hapless yelp, the reporter pitched suddenly to the side, taken by a sharp gust. After recovering his composure, she nodded to the camera and repeated, "…a motorcycle. Though it is clear he had help in his escape, there is no word yet on an accomplice. This is… _oh…_ " a pitch to the right now, her hat flying clear off her head, "…Jane Porter, Channel 7 News. Back to you, Al… _oof_ …"

Sora flipped of the T.V before the feed could cut away from Jane Porter's latest accident, staring blankly at the darkened screen. He felt an insistent weight pressing against his leg, and looked down at Marie, who blinked at him critically.

"What?" he asked, not sure if he was imagining the echo in his voice or not, "Could you not look at me like that?"

He stood up and went to the fridge, where he began a routine search for orange juice he knew he'd already finished.

"They'll find him," Sora said, half-aware that he was speaking to a cat, but feeling as though he was speaking more to himself anyway, "He can't get far, right? The whole town'll be looking for him."

He scratched at the bruise on his face, which had begun to tingle, as though it knew Sora was talking about its Deadbeat Dad going on the lam.

"I don't have to do anything," he told Marie, nodding vehemently, "I don't need to do anything, nobody wants me to do anything, I'm not gonna get anything out of playing the hero, tracking down that smug little prick…"

His stream of consciousness was disrupted by the loud and jarring intervention of a passing motor. Before Sora had realized what he was doing, he'd dashed to the window just in time to see to the receding figure of a motorcycle, going at a speed that would probably be dangerous if there was anyone else on the road tonight. Or if the driver was worth saving.

"Stay here," he told Marie, grabbing his worn, blue hoodie from the closet and puling it on, not even caring that it was probably inside-out. He considered bringing an umbrella, but that would probably slow him down. There were no signs of sirens giving chase to the bike, which meant that… _somehow_ …the cops hadn't yet figured out where their escaped convict was going.

As he struggled with his shoes, Sora realized his Mom was due from work in about a half an hour.

His first thought was something like, _She's gonna freak out if I'm not here_ , and his second thought was along the lines of, _You can't just let him get away!_

Marie was curled up on the coffee table now, her tail beating steadily against the surface. Sora took a deep breath and crossed over to the ready-made notepad magnet on the pantry door, where he wrote a quick ' _Went out for a run. Be back by morning. –Sora._ ' He added a little heart under his name, for good measure, though he knew there was no way of placating her for long.

"Hold down the fort, okay?" he instructed Marie, opening the door and locking it behind him before Marie could give even a yowl of complaint.

As he went down the stairs, taking the steps three at a time, confused thoughts and impulses ran through his head in a flurry.

 _You're crazy; this isn't worth it; you can't chase down a motorcycle, you just got out of the hospital_. But by the time he'd gone out into the street, buffeted on all sides by the storm, the thought that rose to prominence above the rest was, _He's not gonna get away with what he did. I won't let him._

Destiny was small enough that it was easy to judge the general direction somebody would need to go to get to a certain place. There wasn't a lot of room for detours, and Sora had spent enough of his childhood with these streets and alleys as his own personal kingdom to know every way to every place worth going to.

Though the wind was in his face a lot of the way, and he was soaked through before he'd gotten halfway down the block from his building, he didn't worry once about getting lost.

Sora had one close shave with a passing sedan on the crosswalk of Iwerks and Stalling, but aside from a screeching horn and a muffled curse, no harm came of it. He had to keep going, he had to stop him.

 _Nobody else is gonna do it. It's got to be me._

There was only one route one intent on getting the hell out of town fast could foreseeably take that involved passing by Sora's own house, and Sora knew it well enough. At different times through the course of his childhood it had been a haunted crypt, a secret passage, a malfunctioning space station, and…on one memorable occasion…the haunted stomach of a giant space whale.

It appeared at the very westernmost edge of Destiny, where the rolling hills of town finally remembered that they were, after all, located in the Rockies. A high, stony ridge at the end of the road. Not _mountainous_ , by any standards, but tall. Like the wall surrounding a prison complex.

The road ran into the ridge through a dark, often very badly lit tunnel which promised a long, if convenient path out of Destiny and onto the county highway.

Selphie had never liked going in there. There were better places to play, she was always insisting. The park, her yard, the lake. The tunnel smelled like dust and exhaust and Tidus. At which point Tidus would get sulky and say girls had no sense of adventure. Whichever way it ended, they usually ended up spending hours in there. So few cars ever passed through the tunnel at a time, that it was entirely possible to blow off a day playing pretend.

Sora had never been afraid of the tunnel. Dark places were only scary when you were alone, after all. Nothing was going to come after you if you were surrounded by friends.

Well, he was alone now, but there was probably no good in thinking too long about it.

He reached the mouth of the tunnel just in time to spot a flash of silver hair vanishing into the hazy orange light.

 _You probably should've thought this one through a bit more_ , he told himself, wiping sweat and rain from his brow, feeling annoyingly hot despite the chill of the evening, _The tunnel's got one entrance, one exit._

However like the wind he may be, Sora didn't want to chance his odds against a motorcycle. Bikes, after all, don't get tired; he was at a disadvantage here.

Luckily, there was one other way, Sora remembered. Moving quickly as he could manage, he approached the area near the tunnel entrance where plastic garbage bags, old tires, and roadkill had been stacked up since time immemorial. The stench, though not perfectly reminiscent of Tidus, was enough to make him gag, but Sora pushed his way through to the solid steel service door labeled ' _Maintenance Access_ '.

Sora was more than certain it was supposed to be kept locked, but it never was. He recalled one particularly legendary game of hide and seek where he'd kept the others guessing for hours, hiding right above them among the light fixtures.

The metal stairway behind the door wasn't nearly as unstable as it looked, and Sora reached the walkway above (a dangerously slim metal path with a single railing overlooking the road) with no trouble.

It was strangely quiet in the tunnel, Sora noticed. Even the noise of the storm was muffled…all except the wind, which whistled sharply, almost too high to register. The walkway he stood on shifted under his weight, pitching just slightly from side to side. He grabbed onto the railing to steady himself, and kept on, his footsteps clanging against the metal.

 _Let him hear me, if he has too_ , Sora told himself, _What's he going to do? Turn around?_

It was easier than chasing on the ground, anyway. The walkway gave him a clear view for a good way ahead, and he could hear the rumble of the bike's motor echoing off the walls and the low ceiling.

He spotted Riku and his bike before too long. He'd slowed down a little, either because he felt safer now that he was almost out of town, or because he was having bike trouble. Sora couldn't really care very much either way: he had eyes only for the biker himself. Pressing up against the handlebars as if his momentum could make the bike could faster, staring straight ahead, unblinking.

Sora moved further, actually bypassing Riku on the road, peering over the railing to gauge an expression on his face. Haughtiness, maybe? Anger, fear, shame…Sora needed to know. He wasn't sure exactly why, but he needed to…

"Whoa!" His foot caught in the metal bars of the railing and, before Sora quite knew what was happening, he was falling over right into the path of the motorcycle.

"Shit!" and a screech of brakes on the pavement, a harsh, burning smell of tires, hot against the asphalt.

The fall wasn't a dramatic one. Sora had jumped from there more than his fair of times back in the day, if only for the luxury of scaring Kairi. He'd had the sense to throw his arms out in front of him to cushion his fall and, besides some obligatory burning on his palms, he figured he was fine.

He looked up to face Riku, who was sitting on his bike, staring at him with an expression of outright stupefaction.

"Sora." He began, not a question, just a blank statement of fact, He looked over his shoulder, as if he'd been expecting somebody else, "How did you…?"

"Shut up!" replied Sora, attempting to rise to his feet and lurching due to an upsurge of soreness in his side, "I don't hear any sirens, so I guess you were way ahead of them. By the time they figure out the escaped convict tried to _escape town_ you'll be halfway to…to…to Mexico!" he spat, realizing just how exhausted he was, "That was the plan, right?"

Riku looked down, his fingers tightening around the handlebars.

"You were just going to raise hell and then get away with it," Sora continued, placing his own hands over the handlebars, over Riku's hands, "Not this time."

Riku made one attempt to pull his hand out from under Sora's, but must have figured it was no good. Sora noticed his eye lingering on the scars there. New ones from tonight, and old ones from the day of the accident.

"Let go of my bike, Sora," he said quietly.

"Why? You ran over me once; you can do it again. And that wouldn't even be the worst thing you've done, would it?"

"Sora, I never meant to hit you! That was an accident…I…" he drew his hand out from under Sora's with enough force to send Sora staggering a few steps back, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, I think I've heard that one before. Did you apologize to Kairi, too?"

For one fleeting instant, Sora glimpsed a hint of what his mom called a 'tell' in Riku's face. A four second display of guilt, quickly and forcefully disguised. That was all the proof he needed.

"Why?" Sora demanded, "Why Kairi? She never did a thing to you, she didn't even _know_ you, and you made it some kind of mission to have her, right?" Riku said nothing.

" _Right?_ " Sora repeated, his voice harsh and unyielding as it echoed up and down the tunnel.

"No," Riku said finally, in a weird, faraway kind of voice, "You're right. I don't know you. I never should have…" he trailed off.

"Never should have _what_? Is the list that long?"

"I didn't take Kairi!" Riku said at last, "I swear. I never had anything against her. She was just…"

"She was just what? In your way? Too good for you? Can't stand to see anybody else happy? You say you don't know me, then help me out here! What the hell do you _want_?"

Afterward, Sora wasn't sure whether Riku intended on saying anything to that at all. Hell, he was barely sure what _he_ was saying. Either way, at that moment there was a nearby hum of an engine, accompanied by the appearance of headlights at the mouth of the tunnel, back the way they'd come from.

Sora's first thought was that the police had come to their senses at last, and were giving chase. But the car in the tunnel was black and sleek, British-made by the look of it. Tidus may have fainted over it, but Sora had never been able to care too much about cars.

He did, however, notice that this car was moving with deliberate speed and, where other drivers may have honked obnoxiously at the appearance of two kids in their lane, this one made not a sound, nor an attempt to change lanes.

"Sora," Riku's voice was different, somehow, harder, and more purposeful, "Get on."

"Get on what?" Sora didn't take his eyes off the car, craning his neck to see if he could glimpse a face behind the tinted windshield.

The car sped up, bearing toward them with no intent of stopping.

"Come on!" yelled Riku, and Sora felt him grab at his hoodie, yanking him up onto the bike with him, as he kicked it in gear and started down the tunnel.

Sora could do nothing but grab desperately for purchase on the bike, his fingers having no luck on the slippery enamel between the seat and rear wheel. His feet trailed off to either side of the bike. His right foot made contact with the pavement at one point, and Sora heard a hissing noise that he assumed was the sole of his sneaker melting.

"You're gonna fall off if you keep flailing like that," said Riku, "Grab onto something!"

"I know what to do!" Sora replied petulantly, never looking away from the car which was gaining on them all the while.

His hand grabbed onto something, eventually: a soft length of fabric which Sora tugged on to keep from slipping any farther. It was apparently Riku's military jacket.

"Son of a bitch!" Riku swore, falling back into Sora, who nearly flew right off the bike at that point.

"You said grab onto something!" Sora shot back, if only to keep the mounting terror out of his voice.

"Something that isn't gonna fly in your face," Riku looked over his shoulder, as if attempting to gauge how near the car was at this point, "Look, if you have to, hold onto me."

" _What?_ "

"For Christ's sake, you know what I mean!"

Sora did, but he didn't like it. Trying not to think of old movies about greasers and their uptown girlfriends, Sora wrapped his arms around Riku's waist, irrationally hoping their would-be pursuers weren't getting too much of a kick out of all this.

"Who are these guys?" Sora asked, yelling to be heard over the wind in his hair.

Riku shook his head, which Sora supposed was an answer. Whoever they were, they couldn't be biker rivals. Sora didn't know too much about the inner-workings of that circle, but he figured most of them couldn't afford to drive around in Bentleys. And, anyway, they'd probably be riding bikes.

"We can't be much farther," noted Riku, indicating the street sign hanging from the ceiling ahead of them, proclaiming ' _Now Leaving Destiny Township: Pop. 1,312_.'

"Listen," said Sora, craning his neck to speak in Riku's ear, "There's another way out, it's faster. We could lose 'em."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's not far, just bear right." Sora pointed taking his hand from Riku's waist for one desperate maneuver.

"You're pointing left!"

"That's so we confuse them!" said Sora, "They'll think we're going left, but we're gonna fuck around on 'em."

Riku nodded in what seemed to be approval. Sora thought he saw a glint of teeth, a sly smile.

"Alright," said Riku, "Let's fuck around."

Before long, they reached the place where the narrow maintenance ramp climbed up into the darkness.

"That comes out on a service road, just off the highway," Sora told him, "We can fit, but they can't."

"Alright," said Riku, "But hold on. We'll need to speed up."

He made good on that promise. Gunning the engine, they made off full speed for the ramp. Sora felt an odd weightlessness at one point and imagined that, had he not been on the bike to weigh it down, Riku may have popped a wheelie.

So far Sora was having trouble figuring out what was so damn fun about motorcycles, but Riku was clearly having a blast. You'd almost forget he'd basically just admitted to kidnapping somebody and was on the run from the law.

They took the ramp with only the slightest bump, veering smartly toward the wall at the right. There was no railing here, the way there was on the walkway and, though the drop was still not very dramatic, Sora didn't like to think what would happen if they went over the side, bike on top of them and car gaining fast.

"How did you know about this thing?" asked Riku, looking over the side.

"None of your business!" Sora shot back, not really wanting to get into hide and seek and space-whale exploration with him, "There should be an opening in a little bit, it comes out in this tiny cave sort of thing, next to a dumpster I think."

"A dumpster…" began Riku, looking back ahead, "Shit."

Sora followed his gaze and noticed the familiar tunnel exit, now blocked by construction tape and supplies.

"You didn't say it was blocked!" said Riku.

"It wasn't seven years ago!" Which was the best argument Sora could muster for that one.

"Dammit," said Riku through gritted teeth, looking out over the side, to where the car was coasting along, as though waiting for them to come back down, "Hold on."

Before Sora could do anything besides hold on, Riku took the bike on a sharp left turn, sending them off the side of the ramp and back down toward the road.

Sora probably would have screamed, but it seemed the air he'd been breathing was left behind on the ramp, along with his heart, lungs and whatever remained of his dignity.

They hit the road with a colossal thud, swerving madly at first, before Riku was somehow able to balance the bike again. The mouth of the tunnel, facing the highway, was in sight now, the wind and rain coming through looking more welcome than anything they'd find in here.

For his part, Sora had been jolted almost out of his seat by the impact, but had managed to hang on by force of will.

As he was clambering back onto the seat, Sora was very aware of how close the car was now, only bare inches away, keeping at a steady pace so as to avoid ramming right into them.

"Can't this thing go any faster?" he asked desperately, pulling his leg away before the car's fender could clip it.

"She can try," and Riku sped up, the mouth of the tunnel drawing closer and closer, the car struggling to keep pace with them. Sora could smell burning rubber, hot sweat, the inky, clotted smoke of exhaust. The seat beneath him was almost searing.

"Almost there…" Riku continued, eyes never leaving the mouth, "Just a little farther…"

At which point, the darkness of the mouth was rent by another pair of headlights, and a second car entered. Black, again, but a slightly different make. Bigger, more commanding, and bearing straight for them.

"Crap!" Riku put on the brakes, this time not reminding Sora to hold on.

Sora figured he should have known to do that anyway, but the thought had escaped him. Before he knew it, he was flung back from the bike and onto the hood of the pursuing car, which must have slowed down as well with the new arrival.

It was a confused hodgepodge of sensations. The blunt impact, the screech of tires, one or more voices swearing, Riku calling something out, and a blast that sounded suspiciously and frighteningly like gunfire.

Sora didn't have time to make out just what, exactly, all this meant. He felt only a pounding in his head, a throbbing in his chest, and everything went dark.

His last, frenzied thought, was _Two car accidents in two days. Mom's gonna kill me._

* * *

 **A/N:** Thanks for reading! Chapter 6's ETA is currently Friday, August 26.

See you then!


	6. Women's Mysteries

Chapter 6, Women's Mysteries

* * *

 **A/N:** And here is Chapter 6! Sorry I'm a few hours later than usual but, hey, it's still the right day.

I introduce POV #8 of 11. It's a pretty unconventional one, but I figured this kind of story needed that type of character. Also...bombshells, romantic foibles, and friends in rough places to make for what I hope is a satisfying installment.

Enjoy!

* * *

It was impossible to tell what was real and what was imagined. The screams, the shots, the rough hands on his arms, the feel of rough leather under him, a searing pain in his head, a pain hotter, rawer and more blinding than any he had ever felt before.

After that, it only got worse. Rain, wind, thunder, the tossing waters of the lake, the lonely arena at the Overlook, a hand on his arm, a voice screaming at him.

" _No! No, it isn't that easy!_ "

Tears in her eyes, on her face, and suddenly they were red tears, and green eyes, and Axel was standing there, looking like he knew all there was to know about the world, " _Well, screw them. They don't know the half of it._ "

He tossed back his head and he laughed, and just as quickly he was Sora, shoving him against the street, shaking with anger, blocking his way, " _What the hell do you_ want _?_ "

And just as easily, he was Kairi again, shaking her head, venom in her eyes, " _You can't just take whatever you want, the world isn't just_ you _!_ "

His head was killing him, splitting apart, nothing but the rain and the gunshots and Kairi's tears. All his fault, everything, his fault...

Riku opened his eyes with a muffled gasp and immediately pressed his hand against his head. He was lying in a musty four-poster bed in a wallpapered room. The pale light of dawn was streaming through rain-stained windows, and there was music playing somewhere, lots of violins and women singing in harmony.

He allowed himself a stretch, feeling a tautness in his knees and elbows. On closer inspection, he had sustained a few bruises, but he seemed fine.

 _Fine? I wiped out, ran right into that car… Didn't I?_

And he'd heard enough horror stories from Axel to know all the ugly things that could happen to a guy who wipes out, right into another vehicle no less. He pressed a hand to the back of his head, checking for blood or bumps…nothing. The pain was abating too, little by little.

Maybe he'd blacked out before impact, lost track of what had really happened. Stuff like that happened sometimes, so he'd heard.

He pulled the coverlet aside and slowly eased himself out of the bed, getting his bearings. He knew this room, dusty and moldering as it was. The wooden headboard, the peeling floral wallpaper, the toys in the corner, which had been collecting dust unused since before he could remember.

Riku crossed to the window, if only to confirm his suspicion, and nodded to himself. Mountains to the east and south and, though he couldn't see, certainly to the north and west as well. The storm had done a number on the garden below. Shrubs and flowerbeds scattered or uprooted across the lawn, which was already an ugly patchy brown due to the lateness of the season. He saw the wall at the perimeter, the barred gate.

No cars in the driveway, though. But then, there never were.

Taking one look at himself in the grimy mirror for good measure, Riku made his way out of the bedroom and into the dim, fusty corridor beyond. No sound but the music, and the creaking of the house. You couldn't make a step in this place without every room feeling it, it seemed.

Down the stairs, covered with faded velvet carpet, and across the main hall, its curtains all drawn against the morning light, through the solid oak door to the lounge, where the music was loudest. Now that he was near enough, he recognized the tune for what it was, the 'Flower Duet', from _Lakme_ , played on an old gramophone. Of course.

"Riku," she spoke before he was even properly in the doorway, "You've grown."

She may as well have been sitting in that same armchair all these years for all that had changed. Her face, delicate and angular, shockingly white against the wrappings of black and violet silk she wore, as though she were always cold. Thin, wrinkled hands moving slowly as wind-up toys as she spoke: one stroking the raven on her shoulder, and the other holding a little china bowl of seeds from which the bird pecked occasionally.

The raven met Riku's eye at once, the sharp yellow iris honing in on him, almost predatory.

"Diablo recognizes you," she noted, "They are clever birds, ravens. They forget nothing." She waved him forward, "Step into the light, my boy, so I can see you."

So Riku did, moving out of the doorway and closer to the low fire in the hearth. It was incredibly stuffy in here, now he came to think of it. Shadowy and hot and stinking faintly of perfume and smoke.

"Ma'am," he greeted her awkwardly, bowing his head the way he'd been taught so long ago.

"None of that," she shook her head decisively, "You are a man now, and I fear I have been too negligent to notice. For that, You may great me as an equal."

Riku nodded, looking up at her, feeling eight-years-old again, small and weak and vulnerable, an insect under a microscope, "…Maleficent."

"Much better," she smiled thinly, leaning forward in her chair, the fabric of her dressing gown appearing to slither across the carpet, "You have grown wild as you have grown up, Riku."

She gestured him closer with her finger and, no sooner had Riku obliged, she was caressing his arm, feeling the marks and scrapes on them from the tunnel. Her hand was cold, shockingly cold, yet her grip was firm as a woman three times younger.

"You've been living dangerously, child," she said quietly, "Why?"

There it was again; another question, 'why?', a question Riku didn't really want to answer, certainly not to Maleficent, the last person he wanted to see at this point…

"The tunnel," he said abruptly, "The cars…Sora. That was _you_?"

Maleficent removed her hand from his arm slowly, smiling sadly, but looking at the same time oddly proud, "Still no time for games, I see. I am afraid I must claim responsibility for the events last evening. But only half."

"Only half… What are you talking about?" he'd meant to raise his voice, but there was something about being around Maleficent that seemed to make that sort of temperament impossible to affect.

"It was my people who took you away from that tunnel before somebody else could. I had already sent them when I heard you'd broken out of your jail cell." She raised thin, penciled eyebrows at him, "Jafar told you to stay put and to keep your head down, did he not?"

"I…" he trailed off; no point implicating Axel. He figured Maleficent either already knew or would find out soon enough anyway, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Jafar is a fine attorney, but he is paralyzed at the thought of action and initiative." Another slow, curling smile, "We have him beaten there, you and I."

She handed Riku the bowl of birdseed, nodding toward Diablo, who looked at Riku distrustfully, but continued eating all the same.

"Wait," said Riku, aware of Diablo pecking at his fingers, "so, you took me here… Who took Sora? What happened to him?"

"Sora…" Maleficent began, nodding slowly, "The other boy, the one whose little girlfriend you made off with in the night?"

"I didn't!" insisted Riku for what felt like the hundredth time. Yet, somehow, under Maleficent's steely gaze, that benign, knowing smile, the words sounded untrue even to him.

"I know you didn't. Riku, if I thought for one moment that you were some lesser thug, some criminal, some _villain_ , would I have turned a blind eye to your joining this motorcycle gang? Would I have allowed that useless Mim to take off on extravagant luxury tours, abandoning you to fend for yourself? Would I have given permission for you to withdraw that exorbitant sum of money to bail your hapless friend out his own cell? No, of course not. But I trust you, Riku."

She got to her feet with a sweepingly effortlessness, sending Diablo fluttering over to his bras perch by the fireplace, cawing croakily.

"You were not made to adhere to the rules and expectations of others, and nor was I," she wrapped her arm around his shoulder (Riku was shocked to see that, tall as he'd gotten in the last decade, she was still taller than he was) and led him to the window, looking out on the back garden, "We can trust ourselves to do what is right, to do what must be done, and never mind how others condemn us."

She'd always spoken like this, the other two, three times Riku had seen her. Now that Riku was older, he supposed he could at least understand the gist of this flowery, poetic monologue. And, as much as Riku liked the idea of ignoring those that condemned him, he still couldn't shake the feeling he'd done a few things that even he could condemn himself for. He wondered what Maleficent would think of that, but figured he had more important things to take care of at the moment.

"Maleficent, I'm…I'm glad you believe me, really. But I really need to know... What happened to Sora?"

"You are worried about him? The boy that accused you of ruining his life?"

 _Well if he got himself abducted on my account, he wasn't exactly wrong, was he?_

"It's all because of me he was there in the first place," he explained, feeling the color rise to his cheeks, "He followed me, he wanted to keep from getting away. He…he really loves her, you know."

Maleficent nodded again, sighing tonelessly, "A headstrong boy, a graceful, pretty girl gone missing. A valiant attempt to stop her captor from fleeing justice. Yes, Riku, I've heard that story before." She turned to him, "The car that chased you boys into the tunnel belonged to a business rival of mine. They were trying to take you."

For a long while, they stood there at the window, looking at each other, the only sounds the crackle of the fire and the soft humming of the music on the gramophone.

"Me?" repeated Riku at last, "I don't…"

"They know how important you are to me, how much I have invested in your future, and they took advantage of your current spot of bad luck to try and take you out from under me. So that I would cooperate with them." she swept back toward the fireplace, hands toying with the ring on her finger, "I must apologize for that; I have grown lazy as the years have passed, and I have not been watching you as I should have."

"Business rivals? Maleficent, please, I don't understand," Riku was finding it very difficult to keep his composure now, not with Maleficent's never ending habit of speaking in riddles. Not to mention the sudden reminder, the rumor of just what kind of people, exactly, Maleficent did business with.

"What would anybody have to get from…from _kidnapping_ me?"

"You truly do not understand?" Maleficent leaned against the mantel, eyes narrowed, "I suppose you wouldn't…I have not been as present in your life as I would have wished. For your safety, yes, but the point stands. You are like a son to me, Riku, however bad a mother I may seem. To protect you, I have tried to keep our connection out of the public sphere…yet it has gotten out, all the same, as all things do. These people discovered how I care about you, how precious you are to me, and they sought to exploit it."

"And Sora…?" Riku prompted, already knowing the answer.

"I am afraid they took him. My people were instructed to deliver you back to me, safely. And they did. There was no time for further heroics."

Heroics… Riku remembered Sora flying back off of Betty (where _was_ Betty, anyway? He figured either a wreck in the road or somebody else's hostage, more's the pity), onto the hood of the car behind them.

Riku had called out his name, tried to turn back, but then somebody had started shooting. He wasn't sure who, from which car, or why, just that he'd fallen to the floor at the first shoot, his head bumping against Betty's front wheel.

He'd seen Sora lying on the hood of the car before he blacked out; twisted and broken, though he couldn't tell for sure how badly he was hurt, just that he was.

 _It was supposed to be me_ , Riku thought to himself, _They were supposed to take me. God knows why, but they were._

Riku wasn't aware he'd been moving closer to her again, but he was suddenly standing beside her, and she was holding his face in her hand, looking deeply into his eyes.

"I would never let any harm come to you, child. The ocean could dry up, the sun could go out, a thousand children could be dragged off and imprisoned and starved, all before I let anybody hurt you. You are my future, Riku, my legacy."

Riku pulled away, letting Maleficent's hand fall limply to her side. He was breathing deeply, the heavy, sleepy smell of her perfume clotting up his nostrils.

"Maleficent, please. Don't think…don't think I'm ungrateful to you. You took care of me, you gave me a place to live, food to eat. I don't know where I'd be if it weren't for you," he took a breath, continuing more forcefully than he normally would have dared, "But Sora never did anything to anybody, we can't just leave him…"

"We can, if it means you remain safe. I assure you, last night was not the last attempt that will be made against you. They will keep trying, and I must do all I can to keep you safe. That is what a mother does."

Riku stood there, looking at the thin old woman, backlit by the fire. He'd often been frightened of her, this mysterious benefactor who, out of the goodness of her heart, had given him a home and an education and a life (allegedly) off the streets.

He had never, however, felt this kind of fear of her. Not of what she might do to him, but of what she might to do others, for him.

What if it hadn't just been Sora in that tunnel? What if the cops had caught up? What if Axel had gone with him? How many people would have been left behind in Riku's place, all without Maleficent batting an eye?

"I am sending you back to Destiny this afternoon," she was saying, in a quite different, more detached, tone of voice, "You will turn yourself in, and Jafar will represent you henceforth. Believe me, you will be safer behind bars, if not comfortable. This misunderstanding will be cleared up and you can go about as normal. Rest assured, I do not intend this petty rivalry to go on much longer."

"You're sending me back?" Normally, that might not be much of an issue…admittedly, Riku had had no real idea where to go when he'd left Destiny, and he had even less of an idea where anything was in relation to the Hollow, Maleficent's estate.

But he knew what would happen if he returned to the DPD's custody. Questionings, interrogations…they'd be looking for Axel, and Riku would only be putting him in more danger by coming back.

"Maleficent, I can't go back there, please…"

"We will speak no more of this." Said Maleficent firmly, her face impassive but her eyes blazing, "To your room. Sleep."

So Riku returned to his room, closing the door behind him. The pain in his head had faded by now, he realized, yet he didn't think he could bring himself to sleep.

He lay in his bed, looking up at the ceiling and remembering the leaky cracks in his jail cell, Kairi's tears, Axel's smile, Sora's anger, the rush of driving down the tunnel, escape so close…

The way Sora screamed when he was thrown against the car behind them, and of how Riku had laid there in the street, unable to do anything.

 _A thousand children could be dragged off and imprisoned and starved…_

Riku had visited this house three times in his life and been a had been a little scared of it each time. But he'd never felt like a prisoner in it, until now.

* * *

There was something peculiar about walking about a school before classes began, Jane reflected. Hallways were almost empty, and those few students she passed gave her funny looks as she went by. One or two showed small signs of recognition, whispering to each other as she passed.

For her part, Jane smiled courteously at each one, nodding at them as she breezed by, all the while making sure that her press pass was hanging proudly and visibly around her neck.

She counted the numbers on the doors as she passed, trying to contain her nerves, to keep a façade of calm, cool upfrontedness. A 'reporter's' face', if you will.

 _Doesn't necessarily have to be a_ façade _, either,_ she thought, _You ought to just stop panicking. It's just another case, just another story…_

But Jane knew that wasn't true, and no amount of telling herself otherwise would change that.

She reached the correct door at last, situated between a bulletin board, featuring a display of famous explorers, and a janitor's closet.

The door was partially open already, and Jane could make out the outline of a man at his desk. Though she knew she should probably just knock for politeness sake, a sudden impulse to get this whole thing over with flashed through her mind, and she poked her head in the open door.

"Morning!" she greeted chirpily.

Milo looked up from the ledger he was writing in, his bifocals bouncing awkwardly on the bridge of his nose. He looked, as he always had, disheveled, confused and in three different mental locations at once.

"Jane?" he prompted, adjusting his glasses as if afraid he'd mistaken her.

"Milo," Jane replied, stepping through the door and into the classroom, taking a look around at the decorations on the wall, the maps and bric-a-brac from around the world, "Or should I say Mr. Thatch?"

"Milo's fine," he said, blushing, "Should I call you Jane Porter, local correspondent?"

"Try Local Walking Accident," she quipped, approaching the desk, "I don't suppose you watch the evening news?"

"I do. I mean…I always try to catch when you're on," he added, hastily, "You were good. It was a…a big story."

"And I spent the entire time looking ready to fly off to Oz, it was mortifying. You should have seen my editor's face when I got back to the office, he looked hungry for blood…"

"You can't control the weather," replied Milo with a shrug, his eyes finding her press badge, "You…um…you're here as a reporter?"

"As an old friend," said Jane, " _And_ a reporter. I'm sorry I haven't been keeping in touch, Milo. I know I've been rotten."

"No…no, it's fine," he nodded several times as if that made it more true, smiling a broad, goofy grin, "You've been busy. I've been busy. It's been busy."

"You seem to have made yourself very comfortable here, for one thing," remarked Jane, looking up and down his desk, at the little figurines and navigational tools, interspersed just as evenly as staplers and pens, "You must feel right at home."

Milo shrugged, "It's a good job. I like it…students like me, I think."

"Pish," Jane waved her hand at him, "Don't be modest, please, I'm sure they love you."

She went into her bulging canvas bag, rummaging with some haste and trying not to feel self-conscious about how messy everything was.

"Jane…er…don't take this the wrong way," said Milo, that careful, plodding pace he only spoke with when he was dead terrified of offending you, "But the school kind of has a policy against reporters barging in and…"

"Reporters barging in during school hours," Jane replied promptly, "I believe homeroom isn't for another half hour; we've a nifty window of time."

Finally finding what she was looking for, Jane withdrew the brown paper bag from her own canvas bag, setting it down on the desk with an expectant grin.

Looking as though it might explode in his face, Milo took a careful peek inside it. He looked up at her, smiling ruefully, "A bribe?"

"A present! I remember how you lived on those during finals."

Like a child caught stealing, Milo gingerly took a gooey, hot cinnamon roll from the bag. With a tentative look toward the closed door, he took a bite, sighing in gratification.

"Oh my God," he sighed, his mouth still full, "You know, I shouldn't make this so easy for you."

"So few things in life are easy, Milo, why can't we have some exceptions?"

Easy as Jane wanted to think it was, however, she couldn't fight back a surge of nervous shame about this. Milo was right…they hadn't seen each other in far too long. Eager for some distraction, Jane pointed out a delicate painted clay bowl on the desk.

"That's a pretty one. Peruvian? African? West Indies?"

"It's a paperclip dish, Selphie made it for me."

"Selphie?" Jane raised her eyebrows with a knowing smile.

"One of my students," he replied hastily, "It was a…birthday present."

"That really is lovely, that your students go out of the way for you like that." She reached into her cardigan, taking out a notepad and pen, "Which brings me to my point…"

"You want to know about Riku?"

"Well, all three, but he's the one on top of my list. I've already reviewed what I could find of his transcripts, and it seemed to me you're the teacher he knew best." She shrugged, with a smile, "What are the odds?"

"He was my T.A last year," said Milo, taking another bite of the cinnamon roll, perhaps to disguise his guilt, "Good student, helpful."

Jane began to write in her notepad, elegant shorthand in a special code her father had taught her when she was a girl. She and Milo had whiled away many long hours on digsites and at dusty embassies, writing to each other in gibberish.

Milo must have noticed, "You take your notes in New Atlantean?"

"Every journalist has their quirks," Jane shrugged, "Keeps my discoveries safe from prying eyes."

Milo nodded, looking for the moment much younger, more comfortable, (though it was never in his nature to look _relaxed_ ) "I take my notes in it too, sometimes. Lesson plans, so on. Old habits…"

"Well, I promise to never steal your midterm answers, if you don't steal my stories."

Milo shook his head, "You won't need to worry about that," he said evenly, "I don't know what else to say about Riku. H was a good student, smart, responsible…didn't get in a lot of trouble around here."

"Whatever else he may have been up to outside of school?"

Milo seemed to deflate, his fingers playing anxiously around the leather strap of his glasses, "He was lonely, Jane. Didn't make friends easy…not much of a support system at home, from all I could get. He was…um…adopted, I guess you could call it. Some philanthropist paid for his education and all that, but he had no…well, no parental figures."

Something about the almost accusatory way he said that, made Jane defensive, "Being lonely isn't a sentence to joining up with street gangs! He had a choice, Milo."

"Did he?" Milo sat back in his chair, "If everybody looks at you a certain way, attaches a label to you, how long does it take before you _become_ that label?"

"That's…a very academic way to put it," said Jane slowly, "But I see what you mean."

An image flashed into her head, of long ago days in the clean air of the Andes, days spent exploring temples and nights spent lying in the grass, naming the constellations and telling stories of old jaguar gods and ghosts that still walked amongst the open tombs.

Milo with his maps and books, Jane with her sketchpad and pencils.

" _You know, if you would just stop fidgeting, for five minutes, you'd look perfect._ "

" _Maybe if you weren't staring so hard, it'd be easier._ "

" _So perhaps I'd better close my eyes and draw you?_ "

And she had; all these years later, and she had no idea what had happened to that abysmal mess of a drawing.

"He was a troubled kid," Milo continued, "A lot of us are."

"Not everybody has someone to learn Neo-Atlantean dialects with, eh?" prompted Jane in a lighter tone. Milo's smile was enough to cheer her up. she hadn't meant to upset him…this whole case was taking up so much space in her head it was hard to remember other things, even things she'd known her whole life.

"Well, I take it he had some friends…dubious though they may be. Somebody broke him out of that cell, after all."

"I believe the DPD has a lead on that, but you wouldn't believe how tight-fisted they are with new information. They've probably put an APB out for the accomplice, and I won't know until another week is out." She sighed, "But that's beside the point."

"Not that this has anything to do with anything," Milo continued, "But I would have stayed in that cell, if I were him. Running would just make him look guilty."

"And you don't think he is?" asked Jane softly, her pen on the page, but writing nothing, as per her old friend's request.

"Guilty of kidnapping?" Milo shook his head, "No. Not him."

"Kids have done bad things before."

"You think I don't know that, Jane?" Milo laughed bitterly, indicating the classroom around him, "I do teach history."

"History isn't quite the same as criminal psychology."

"It's got a lot in common. So does journalism, I suppose."

Jane nodded, "Fair point. Truth be told, I'd rather it wasn't him either. Big a deal as this story is…well, something about it doesn't sit right with me." She twined a lock of hair around her finger, looking back up at Milo, abashed, "Don't tell my editor that, though. This is the hottest news item our town's seen in years."

"It just feels icky exploiting a case of teen-on-teen violence?"

"Icky. Yes, that's one word for it. But those Incan burial chambers were icky too, in their own way, and I survived." She stepped back from the desk, "You did too."

"I did," said Milo with a sigh, looking at his watch, "I guess you'll be going?"

"I suppose," she didn't feel ready to leave, though, not really, and not just because of the meager contents of her interview, "Thank you Milo, for speaking with me. I'm sorry if I was out of turn to come here."

"No, it was nice seeing you again." Milo gestured to the bakery bag, "You should come around more often."

He smiled again, and Jane felt her heart melt for him. His genuineness and his spirit and his empathy.

"I'll try to," she told him, making for the door.

"And Jane," Milo called before she'd quite left, "Be careful, okay? Like you said, this case is icky. More ways than one."

"Never you worry about me, Mr. Thatch," Jane smiled at him, leaving the room and starting down the hallway, now slightly more crowded than it had been when she'd arrived.

 _Always a bleeding heart, Milo_ , she thought, _Three missing teenagers and he thinks the biggest suspect is innocent!_

Perhaps he was, Jane rationalized. Things, after all, were seldom how they seemed. New Atlantean was a secret code composed of mixed Ancient Greek and early Sabean script, after all. Nonsense to most people, but clear as crystal to those two who knew it.

And, Milo, Jane knew, had a way of knowing things to be true, even when nobody else could see it. That, she thought, may be enough reason for her to approach this case differently.

* * *

" _New information discovered at the tunnel site suggests there were two cars on collision course. No trace of the two boys has been…_ "

"Oh my God, could you _please_ change the channel?" asked Selphie, looking away from the radio as though to even make eye contact with it would scald her.

"Sorry, Selph," said Tidus, moving to change the station (never a big deal for him since he never had both hands on the wheel anyway), moving it to the local Big Band station. However, Selphie would gladly take hours of men crooning about dolls and pizza pies over more non-developments in what was quickly becoming Destiny High's very own home grown tragedy.

"I mean, it's not like they have anything _new_ to talk about, right?" asked Selphie, feeling a twinge of hysteria creep into her voice, "It isn't like 'Oh, we caught the murderer! Victory is ours!' No, it's like when news people stand in front of a burning building and say 'Oh, the fire's still going on, but we'll be here to tell you all about it until it goes out.' I think I'm gonna be sick."

Tidus nonchalantly rolled down the window on Selphie's side of the car. She gave him a look, "Classy, Ti. Classy."

"You said you felt sick!"

"It's called hyper bowl, you doofus, I was exaggerating!" she sighed, leaning back in her chair, "Kairi told me about it. I would have _bombed_ English if it wasn't for her stupid color-coded flashcards."

Tidus immediately adapted the deer-in-headlights petrification of boy-forced-to-deal-with-feelings, "Selphie…aw, Selphie, c'mon, don't cry…"

"I'm not crying!" insisted Selphie as the tears came at last, trickling down her face, hot and stinging, "Oh, fuck, I'm crying! Where do you keep the Kleenex in this stupid car…?"

Tidus maneuvered the car over to a double-parked position not far from Morty's and went for the glove compartment in the same motion as Selphie herself made to open it. Their hands met briefly, and Selphie could feel the rough skin of palm: hot from the wheel, calloused and worn from all that football.

He drew it away quickly enough, nodding slowly, "In there."

Selphie nodded, getting a pack of tissues from inside and wiping her eyes, "God, I can't let anybody see me like this. I'm a train wreck."

"We don't have to order out if you don't want to," Tidus told her with a shrug, "We can…um…we can just… I can take you home."

"Ugh, no. Mom's gonna be all fussy trying to keep me from panicking. Haven't I told you how I can't _stand_ Buddhist prayer candles?"

"Oh. So…we can order out?" asked Tidus, looking almost ashamed of the little smile that stole up his face at that.

"Yeah," said Selphie, "yeah, let's…let's do that. It wouldn't be Friday, without it, huh?"

Of course, it wouldn't be Friday without Sora and Kairi in the car too, all arguing about what they were going to order and how they were going to split the cash this time. On autumn afternoons, Sora and Tidus would spend about half the whole thing arguing about football, while Selphie gossiped to Kairi who always looked so _interested_ for Selphie's sake.

But Selphie couldn't give Kairi and Sora back to Tidus; she could, at least, keep him from spending the afternoon alone.

"Drive through looks like a bitch," commented Tidus at the line of cars crawling up to the window. He slammed a hand against the steering wheel in frustration, "Sorry, Selph."

"We can eat in, if you like." Said Selphie with a shrug, "I promise I won't cry all over the fries."

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure! I was joking about the fries, Tidus…

"I know," he said, reddening awkwardly, "that's not what I…"

"It's okay," Selphie told him with a resigned sigh, getting out of the car and stepping into the parking lot, "I get it."

She could almost sense Tidus' apprehension as they crossed the lot to Morty's.

 _Poor guy_ , a part of her thought, _I'm not making this any easier for him._ Yet another part, the part perhaps most influenced by Kairi, said _You're allowed to be upset too, you know. He's your friend, you're in the same boat here._

Yet somehow, it didn't feel like that. Selphie had been a ticking time bomb of nerves ever since she'd heard Kairi had vanished. Now, to wake up this morning and find out that Sora had disappeared too, without a trace, along with the one everybody thought had taken Kairi…

The world somehow seemed much bigger than it had before, and quieter, and lonelier. It was harder to smile at things, to laugh and be glib and everything she'd so often done without any trouble at all.

Tidus, however, seemed to be maintaining a masterful effort to hide whatever he was really feeling. Though he was obviously _affected_ by all this, the most he showed was an occasional frown or an uncomfortable shrug.

Selphie's Mom might have said all men were like that, and there was nothing that could be done about it. Kairi would have said that Tidus was just emotionally crippled because of 'social conditioning', whatever the hell that was. Sora would have laughed it off and told Tidus to snap the hell out of it, for the rest of their sakes.

Like he had the night of the game, even though they all thought Sora was even more crushed than Tidus. And maybe he was, but he wasn't going to let that stop him.

Morty's was typically crowded for a Friday afternoon, customers packed shoulder-to-shoulder, three lines stretching out to the door from the counter. Selphie had quite forgotten what it was like to have to wait in this place, she'd gotten so used to the drive-through.

There was a couple, college-aged, roughly, just ahead of where Tidus and Selphie were on line. Selphie might have taken no notice of them outside of Guy's bubble-butt and Girl's hideous weave, but something Guy was saying caught in her ear and…well, Selphie had always had a keen ear for useful gossip, something most girls didn't evolve until well past childbearing years.

"…All tied up in sex and drugs or something, that's how this stuff usually goes. Those gangs are no joke."

"My brother tells me they're a joke compared to when he was a kid," Girl replied with a bored shrug, "You know he was almost killed by one of those guys from up north? The Windbreakers."

"Wind _maker_ s, genius. Nothing really ominous about calling yourself a 'windbreaker' is it?"

"You tell me." A haughty, obnoxious laugh. Selphie rolled her eyes flagrantly, getting Tidus' attention. He had apparently not been eavesdropping at all (she wasn't sure how boys could be so oblivious to things like that), though now he began to listen, she could see.

"I heard the girl's boyfriend went off trying to keep the kid from getting away," Girl continued, "That's commitment, I guess."

"Brave and stupid," Guy countered, "Chased a goddamn motorcycle thug to the town limits and we're supposed to be _surprised_ his plan went to shit!"

Selphie's listening process was interrupted by a sudden push from behind her, as Tidus stepped forward, as if to charge.

"Tidus, no, don't!" she hissed, grabbing him by the lapel of his jacket to restrain him, much the same way she and Zack had kept him back the night of the party, when he'd seen Sora and Riku coming to blows outside.

Guy and Girl looked to regard them, perhaps alerted by the commotion, but all they would have seen was a girl straddling the front of a very huffy-puffy looking boy.

 _Crap, this is gonna be one for the gossip mill, ain't it_?

Still, she figured it was better to do this than to do nothing while Tidus went off and got himself beaten up, arrested, or both.

"Let go of me!" said Tidus, trying to yank himself loose.

"Not until you promise not to assault anybody," she told him, narrowing her eyes.

"You heard what he was saying, right?"

"Yes, Ti, I heard everything he was saying before you did, I'm talented like that. So what?"

"He called Sora stupid!"

"You call Sora stupid on a daily basis, and nobody's declared a Holy War on your beach bum behind. He's an asshole, a lot of people are, and assholes aren't worth fighting, no matter how much they sully your friends' honor, or whatever."

She thought again of the differences between guys and girls. Tidus and Sora, hot-tempered and valiant, always leaping to defend themselves or others, heedless of consequences. Kairi and Selphie, however...

Kairi had had her share of assholes giving her a rough time, once upon a long time ago. When Selphie had met her, she'd been surprised at how well Kairi took all of it, always with her head held high, sometimes even _smiling politely_ (that was probably the craziest part, the politeness) at them. Poised and dignified as a princess.

When Selphie had asked her (probably not very politely, admittedly) why Kairi allowed people to treat her like that, Kairi shrugged and said they didn't have to bother her if she didn't let them.

Well, that hadn't sat well for Selphie at all. Kairi's tormentors may not have bothered _her_ , but Selphie was sure as hell bothered. One favor begged from her super-cool big brother later, and Kairi was never bullied again.

Selphie had always suspected that Kairi knew why the bullying stopped, but Selphie wouldn't allow for her to mention it. She could be dignified and princess-like too.

 _Add_ that _to the research,_ she mused, _Boys protect each other in the open, girls do it quietly, behind the scenes. That probably means something, whatever it is._

She wondered which was better, but at the moment she had an ongoing situation to diffuse. Tidus was still wriggling in her grip, looking uncomfortable as a fish on a hook, "What, you think Sora was an idiot for running off like that?"

Actually, Selphie kind of did, but that didn't mean she loved Sora any less. If Sora wasn't an impulsive idiot with nothing but the best intentions he wouldn't be Sora, and therefore not worth any of her time. But it wouldn't do to have Tidus hear _that_ part, undoubtedly he wouldn't get the point.

"No, I don't. but you'd be an idiot for going after some jerk in a public place just for saying something stupid in a _private conversation_. The fraternity of man is sadly not exempt from the Disturbance of the Peace index." She let go of Tidus, wiping her hands off on her skirt by reflex.

Tidus looked at her, abashed, licking his lips nervously, "You're right, I was being an ass."

"You were," Selphie nodded, smiling to soften the blow, "But it's nice to hear you admit it."

"Were you really going to hold me back if I _did_ start something?"

"I figure it's my duty to stick up for my friends. We happy few that remain, that is." She jabbed a finger into his chest, "But you would have paid for any damage incurred to my hair, nails and teeth in the process. Buster's girlfriend probably learned to fight from the hogs back home, and I'm far too delicate for that."

He laughed with her, wrapping his arm around her waist. Selphie let out a little gasp as he did that, that sudden and unanticipated motion, effortless and fluid as it was. She couldn't recall him ever touching her like that before, and she wondered if he even realized he was doing it.

She made sure to put her free hand over his arm, to keep it in place when he did. It was nice having somebody so close… Her remark about the happy few must have gotten to him more than she'd meant it.

 _Funny how big the difference is, between four and two._

Asshole Couple had by now finished their order and stepped off the line, allowing Tidus and Selphie to step up to the head of it.

The automatic, forced cheeriness of a cashier, "Welcome to Morty's, may I take your…"

" _Zack?_ " blurted Tidus, loud enough to cause heads to turn at the tables.

And Zack it was, kitted out in an ill-fitting red polo shirt, the wild tangle of his hair tucked clumsily beneath a blue baseball cap.

Whatever bright, servile smile he'd had on faded in an instant when he saw the two of them, replaced by a slack-jawed look of shock and, Selphie thought, mortification. He looked to the floor, fingers drumming against the linoleum of the countertop. Selphie heard a muted chuckle, and he nodded at them.

"…hey." He said weakly, that smile crawling slowly back up his face, as if it was causing him physical pain.

"Hi," said Selphie, looking pointedly at Tidus, before ordering, "Two doubles, on the double. Large fries. I'm feeling like Coke today. I know Tidus likes Dr. Pepper."

"Sprite, actually…" said Tidus.

"Surprise us." Selphie finished, rummaging in her handbag for her wallet, and, within, her credit card, "Scan it, it should cover it." She handed it to Zack, smiling brightly and, she hoped, genuinely.

Zack blushed as he took the cars, scanning it, "Thanks. Um…coming right up."

For good measure, Selphie winked at him, taking the card back to stand off to the side, tugging Tidus along with her.

"Crazy, right?" said Tidus, sotto voice, "Never would have pegged him for the burger flipping type."

"Yeah, I got that from the expression of scandal and nausea you were so tastefully displaying before."

"I wasn't _nauseous_ , I was just surprised, is all. Zack never talked about having an extra job…"

"You know, I'm starting to think there's a real good reason for that," said Selphie shortly.

Tidus shrank back, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know, Ti, but in my limited life experience, folks don't really appreciate being gawked at like…like flowers in a zoo!"

"What?"

"Order up!" called Zack from the counter before Selphie could back track and correct herself. She was off her game this afternoon, usually she could come up with a snappier comeback in less time than it took to blink an eye. This whole thing was getting to her in a bad way, and the sudden appearance of Zack wasn't making things any easier.

"We'd better get that," she told Tidus, going up to the counter to collect the bulging paper bag from the hapless cashier.

"Tossed in a few extra fries, on the house," Zack whispered to them as he handed the bag over, "Figured we could all use a little something what with…"

"Aw, thanks!" gushed Selphie, peeking inside to catch a whiff of the heady, addictive aroma of fresh fast food, "That's really sweet, isn't it, Ti?"

"Oh," nodded Tidus, "Yeah. Thanks, man. Really. That's cool of you."

Zack pumped his fist half-heartedly, "We are Destiny High, right?"

"Yeah," said Tidus, accepting the bag, "We are."

"Um, and guys…" Zack looked over his shoulder toward the kitchen, and again toward the door and the parking lot beyond, "If it's not too much trouble, could you…I dunno…maybe not mention this to…to anyone? It's just…"

"Of course," Selphie told him, "Yeah, totally."

For a half-second she considered telling him he shouldn't be ashamed of making some money of his own, no matter where it was. One of those really empowering speeches you heard at graduation ceremonies and on public access T.V.

But she didn't have the words for it, and she didn't think they would help him if she did.

"Um…yeah," said Tidus, "Sure, man, if you don't want…"

"It's your business," said Selphie before Tidus could dig himself any deeper, "But, just so you know, you look really kickass in that hat."

Zack moved to adjust the brim of his hat, biting his lip nervously, though Selphie could see she'd cheered him up at least a little.

"Heh…um, thanks." He muttered, "Thanks guys, really."

"See ya around, String the Second," she told him, starting for the door.

"Oh, and…um…" he called out before they could go too far, "If anything new comes up about…well, about Sora and Kairi…"

"We'll let you know," said Selphie, giving him a little wave as she walked out, Tidus at her heels.

As they went back to the car, Tidus let out a hollow laugh, running his hand through his hair, "Jeez, he was wound up. Guess he's pretty shaken up about Sora…"

"He worships the ground Sora walks on, Tidus, you _do_ know that, right?"

"Well…yeah, I guess, he's second string running back, after all…"

"Yeah, I heard."

"Pretty funny finding him here at Morty's, huh?" Tidus starting rifling through the pockets of his shorts for his keys, smiling jokingly as Selphie as he did so, "Pretty keen on keeping it a double life, right?"

"Gee, I wonder why?" said Selphie, almost below his hearing.

Tidus looked up, his smile fading, "What was that?"

"Well, I'm just saying, if _I_ were Zack, I wouldn't want the same people who treat me like the designated village idiot to know I flip burgers in my spare time."

Tidus blinked at her, a stupidly slow look of realization creeping across his face. Just a little while ago, Selphie would have found his slow uptake to be endearing and sweet, but now it upset her, in a way she couldn't really describe.

"We don't treat Zack like an idiot," said Tidus at last, "He's part of the team…"

"He's an extra, a joke, and he knows it!" insisted Selphie, surprised at how high her voice was, how flushed she was getting, "All he wants is to be part of the gang, and here you are talking about him like he's this hapless goofball putz with this whole routine of shenanigans and gags and… _Ugh_!" she leaned against the car, filching a pair of fries from the bag as she did so.

It was all making sense now. Why Zack had been so left out at her party, why he was so protective of Sora, why he'd helped her hold Tidus back.

 _The poor little doofus just wants to fit in_ , she thought with a pang, _He doesn't know what they all think about him_.

Or he did, and he didn't let it bother him anyway. Selphie didn't know which was more depressing.

Tidus had gotten his keys by now, and unlocked the car. He looked at her, searchingly, "Look, Selphie, don't take this the wrong way but…I think you're overreacting, maybe."

"Overreacting?" she got into the car at the same time as Tidus slid into the driver's seat, "I don't overreact, Tidus, I know what I saw."

"We're all kind of on edge, right now. Maybe you're just seeing things that aren't really there, because you're so upset..."

"Oh, oh, I see." Selphie nodded, smiling vindictively, "I'm so drunk on my own pain and sorrow that I'm hallucinating! This is all just a really crazy fever dream! You've never been arrogant, or pigheaded, or mean, and you've sure as hell never treated anybody else badly without thinking of the consequences. Clearly I have fallen down the wrong rabbit hole, Ti, because everything's gotten topsy turvy on me…"

"Zack's my friend, Selphie, first of all…" now Tidus raised his voice, leaning over in his seat, looking both angry and offended.

"He thinks he's your friend, he really wants to be your friend, but when have you ever given him the time of day?"

"You know what, Selph, I really don't get where all this is coming from, 'cause as far as I can see you and Zack had jack all to do with each other before you started giggling over cereal together."

Selphie rolled her eyes, getting another fry from the bag, "That's not the same thing, Zack doesn't think about me the way he thinks about you."

Tidus blinked, "The _hell_?"

"Oh, get your mind out of the gutter for a change!" she cried, "He idolizes you and Sora, I don't get why, but he really, really wants to be like you. He's left out of the loop all the time, and he knows it, and he doesn't let it get him down because I guess he's made out of sterner stuff than the rest of us, after all!"

Tidus sighed, one hand clinging desperately to the steering wheel, "Aw, Selph, don't cry."

"I'm not crying!" Selphie insisted, feeling the tears on her face already, "Dammit, it _sucks_ to be alone."

Even as she said it, she wasn't sure if she was talking about herself, about her and Tidus, now that Sora and Kairi were gone, or about Zack, standing behind that counter and flipping burgers, always looking out for a sunnier tomorrow.

"Selphie…you're not alone," said Tidus, as if from miles away, "You've got…you've got Wakka, and your folks, and…uh…"

"And you?" prompted Selphie flatly.

"Um…yeah, I guess."

She groaned audibly, leaning her head back against the headrest, "It'll have to do, I guess. Just do me one favor, okay?"

"What?" he asked, looking somewhat apprehensive.

"Stop being a dick to everybody for a change. Even in fun. Just, like, be nice. Sora could do that, he could be funny and nice without being an asshole, he must have rubbed off on you at _some_ point, right?"

Tidus chuckled, starting the car, "Fine, it's a deal. For Sora."

As he started to back out of the lot, he turned to her, "What did you mean when you said Sora _could_ do that?"

"I mean what I said, Ti. It's possible for me to speak without double-talk, you know."

"No, I mean…you were talking about him like he was…well, _past tense_."

Selphie went rigid in her chair, "Oh. I didn't… I didn't mean to. He's not…he's present tense, obviously. Wherever he is."

"Yeah," Tidus reached into the bag in her lap and took a fry of his own. Selphie may have tried swatting it out of his hand, but something about the way he smiled at her as he took an ungainly bit of it made her desist.

"Present tense,"

Selphie wiped away the last of her tears and closed her eyes. It really was just her and Tidus now, and somehow that idea wasn't quite as frightening as it had been. Even the idea of being alone was beginning to seem silly to her.

It didn't have to just be her and Tidus. They weren't the only ones affected by all this…if she could only get that through Ti's stubborn noggin.

* * *

Celeste slept fitfully, short bursts of slumber interrupted at intervals by the ringing of a phone and nearby chatter. She didn't dream, but wavered in and out of waking, images of a stormy night, and a dark tunnel, and her son's terrified eyes taking shape in her head and just as quickly dissipating again.

When she finally did wake up for good, it was with the feeling of a firm, pincer-like hand on her shoulder, and a sharp smell of coffee under her nose.

"Asleep again, dear, don't try to hide it," Amphitrite set her purse down in the chair next to her, pressing the Styrofoam coffee cup into Celeste's hands.

Celeste moved to a sitting position, blinking rapidly in the sudden light of the dispatch office. What few officers were present seemed intent on business, pointedly avoiding looking at the two women sitting by the water cooler.

She nodded gratefully at Amphitrite, holding the cup of coffee to her lips.

"Go easy on it, it's stronger than motor oil and not half as sweet."

"What time is it?" asked Celeste, noting how hoarse her voice sounded, raw and scratchy, broken. Her eyes were burning too, and her whole face seemed to sting with a raw prickling, dried tears caked there like a glaze.

"Half past three and, no, nothing new has come up, before you ask." Amphitrite sat down with a heavy sigh, "I've already asked three different people if they've made any headway on this search and they all look at me like I'm speaking in tongues.

She put her hand over Celeste's arm, "Celeste, I tell you, if you need to, you ought to just go home. I'll stay here and I'll call you if anything happens…"

Celeste shook her head, taking a ginger sip of the coffee, grimacing at the taste, but not begrudging it, she was so tired.

"It's easier to stay here…if they find something, I don't want to come all the way back here, first…" she pushed her hair out of her eyes, looking at the solemn, concerned face of the older woman next to her.

"You'll waste away sitting here, surrounded by these mincing yes-men, Celeste it isn't healthy."

"Well, Amphitrite, I'm not really concerned about my own health right now," Celeste stood up, pacing in a tight circle in front of the chairs, "If I go home, I'm just going to sit there, thinking about Sora, and about where he is, and not knowing would just drive me crazy. At least here, I'll be first to know when they _do_ find something."

Amphitrite opened her mouth as if to say something to that, but was cut short by a new voice calling out across the office.

"Cel! Knew I'd find you here." Cid crossed the room in three quick strides, arms outstretched and a surprisingly stony, solemn look on his face. A few of the cops on duty looked at him side-eyes as he passed, and nodded at him, though he didn't seem to notice.

Before Celeste knew it, he had enveloped her in a hug, a few drops of coffee spilling over the sides of the cup and onto her sweater, though she was too tired to notice. Not just tired either, but relieved. She hadn't expected a visit from Cid, but it was enormously gratifying knowing she wasn't alone.

"How are you holding up?" he asked her, patting her on the back.

Celeste pulled away from him, gently, the stench of cigarettes and deep fryer oil clogging her nostrils, though the smells themselves weren't necessarily unpleasant.

"It's mostly just waiting at this point."

"Ever tried watching grass grow?" asked Amphitrite from where she stood off to the side.

Cid looked questioningly at her and Celeste figured she'd have to make the appropriate introductions, "Um…Cid, this is Amphitrite, a friend of mine. Amphitrite, this is Cid, my boss." Noting Cid's skeptical smirk, she added, "And also a friend."

"Onshant," Cid spoke his mangled French with a heart wrenching earnestness, extending his hand for Amphitrite to shake. She took it, looking summarily unimpressed.

"Well, if you are Celeste's boss, perhaps you can boss her out of here. She's worrying her head off in this place, and I tell you it's no good."

"I'm fine, really," Celeste insisted, though she didn't miss Cid looking her up and down; no doubt it was plain to see how _not_ fine she really did look.

"Well, you say you're fine, you're fine," Cid said at last. Amphitrite sniffed dismissively and muttered something about men.

"My brother was on the Force, yonks ago," Cid continued, looking around the office with a quiet detachment, "Not the same thing, I guess, but he always said he could never put a big case to the back of his head, so he almost never came home. Our Ma was worried sick, poor beauty."

"You understand, then?" prompted Celeste, looking back at Amphitrite, who had taken a skein of violet wool from her handbag and began knitting with an almost vicious determination, "She means well, really, and I'm grateful to her, but…" she shrugged, "I need to feel like I'm doing something, you know?"

"I hear that." Cid glanced quickly at Amphitrite with her knitting, "She's the grandma? Your boy's girlfriend's gran, the girl that's…"

"Yes, she is." Said Celeste, "We're both worried. I guess I'm just not as good at being realistic."

"No such thing as realistic when it comes to family. Everybody's different." He sighed, "I don't think I could ever have been a Daddy."

"Why not? You're bossy enough for parenting." She laughed lightly, the noise grating against her throat.

"Hmph. Bossy, maybe, but I don't think I've got the courage. Takes brass balls to be a parent." He nudged her in the side, and Celeste couldn't help but roll her eyes goodnaturedly.

"Are you trying to call me brave?"

"Trying? I thought I did a pretty good job, if I say so myself."

"Thank you," she didn't feel very brave at all now, though. The thought of Sora running out into that storm, chasing a motorcycle (that was just like him; impulsive and reckless, heedless of rhyme and reason), entering a tunnel only to never come out the other side…

"Tell you the truth," Cid was saying, "I can't help feeling sorta responsible for what happened."

"What?" Celeste looked up at him.

"I shouldn't have kept you and Aerith late last night. Stupid of me to forget you had your boy alone, jumpy as a cat on hot bricks. You may have gotten back in time to stop him, if I hadn't…"

"No," said Celeste firmly, "Believe me, Cid, he would already have been gone."

The note on the fridge. ' _Out for a walk_ ', that silly little heart where a signature should have been. Celeste remembered that feeling of hopeless incapacitation, walking into the apartment, calling Sora's name, finding Marie sitting on the sofa looking at her warily, as if she knew some great secret.

She had only to turn on the T.V to figure out just where Sora had gone and why. Witnesses had seen two boys go into the tunnel from one side, a car following them. Now there was talk of a second car, coming in on collision course from the west-facing side. No blood at the scene, but signs of gunfire, of a struggle.

She'd sat on the couch staring at the T.V long after the news was replaced with late night talk shows before forcing herself to her feet and coming here.

"It wasn't your fault, anyway. I didn't have to stay and drink, tell my own sob story." She still felt bad about that; it hadn't been her intention to offend Aerith so deeply. Something about her story had just struck a nerve.

 _You pick the worst time to be over-sensitive, as always._

She looked at Cid pointedly, "So please, none of this 'it's my fault' shtick, alright? It's so nice of you to come and check on me like this, but I don't want you burdening yourself with guilt you don't deserve."

"Whatever you say," said Cid with a flat smile.

There was a sudden clamor from the Commissioner's office across the room, and Ratcliffe emerged, looking blusterier than usual. Perhaps sensing another opportunity to gripe about her least favorite local official, Amphitrite lowered her knitting needles and watched as the red-faced policeman ushered a harried young woman out of the office.

"I believe that is enough for today, Miss Potter," he told her, looking with a particular disgust at the handheld tape recorder she was clutching desperately, along with a notepad, pen and overflowing canvas bag.

"I would count yourself lucky I don't notify your superiors about this flagrant lack of professionalism!" he continued, in such a histrionic manner that it seemed undoubtable he intended everyone in the room to hear, "I would thank you to schedule meetings in advance, henceforth, and keep your bogus recording devices well away from here!"

He looked about at the dispatch, evidently noting his own men staring at him, "Back to your business!" he ordered, returning to his office with a slam of the door.

The reporter remained staring at the closed door for some time, gathering assorted miscellany that had fallen out of her bag. Celeste faintly heard her mutter, "It's Miss _Porter_ , for your information."

"Ain't that the British broad from the news?" asked Cid.

"'Broad' may be a vague term in this instance," said Amphitrite, returning to her knitting, "But she made Ratcliffe squirm, which is admirable enough for me."

"Can't imagine that'd be difficult, at any rate."

Amphitrite made a soft, dry coughing noise that may have constituted a chuckle. Perhaps she'd decided she liked Cid after all.

"One second," Celeste told them, crossing the room to the reporter. Everyone was staring at her, scrambling about on hands and knees, trying to squeeze stationery, sticky notes and notebooks all back into her bag. Celeste wasn't sure if it was the mother in her, or the waitress, but she couldn't help but sympathize.

"Would you like some help?" she offered, getting down beside her.

Miss Porter (Jane Porter, Channel 7 News, if Celeste remembered correctly) looked up at her like a kid caught stealing. An embarrassed smile crossed her face and she nodded, "Well, yes, thank you, if it isn't too much trouble."

As Celeste helped her gather a stack of very detailed (and marked up) maps of the American Southwest, Miss Porter fetched a little packet of wipes from her jacket and handed them to her.

"If you like," she offered, "It must be awfully uncomfortable, all the dried tears. Bad for your skin too, so I hear."

"Thank you," Celeste took a wipe, dabbing gently at the tearstains on her face. Though it was refreshing, cleaner, to be rid of them, Celeste was no fool. She could tell when somebody wanted something.

"Is that a trick that teach in the T.V biz?" she asked, going back to the maps.

"Yes," Jane admitted, "That, and my father is the fussiest hypochondriac. He sees bacteria in every shadow. Well, I suppose he isn't wrong about that, but that's beside the point." She blinked, tentative, "I'm sorry…you _are_ the mother, right?"

"The mother," celeste repeated, "Not sure I usually answer to that, but yes. Sora's Mother."

"Sora," Jane pronounced it carefully, as if trying the name out on her tongue, "You seem to know who I am."

"You're always very helpful with the morning traffic reports," Celeste smiled, "But I don't think you want to ask me about convenient detours now, do you?"

"Oh, am I that obvious?" Jane shook her head, "I'm sorry, I can't think how lost you must be right now, how worried… I don't know if I could bear it if it were me. I'm sorry, that's probably the last thing you wanted to hear."

"No, it's fine. Believe me, there are a few worse things I can think of hearing right about now."

Jane nodded, as if she understood, looking from the closed door of Ratcliffe's office to the officers milling about the dispatch desks.

"They haven't been telling you anything, have they?" Jane asked, more quietly, at the same time reaching into her bag and discreetly letting a few more pens and pencils fall to the floor, so they could stay down, picking things up.

"Nothing," Celeste replied, feeling a slow prickle of goosebumps up her arms, "Why?"

"Ratcliffe's always been stingy about what he tells the press. It was stupid of me to think I could sneak a recorder in there, but that's what I get for not planning things through…" she leaned a little closer, her breath tickling Celeste's ear.

"You're the poor boy's mother, you have a right to know what he doesn't what to tell everyone else. In a perfect world, this wouldn't be an issue…"

"In a perfect world, nobody would abduct children in the first place,"

Jane nodded, "Of course, you're right about that." She took a careful breath, toying with one of her pens, "The DPD has a very solid lead on where your son was taken, but they don't want to release the information yet. Some bollocks about it being 'too early' to act, or some nonsense… They believe he and the other boy were taken by a criminal cartel, but they don't know why."

Celeste felt her air catching in her lungs, "Cartel? You mean…the _mob_?" Sora, her son, her precious boy who'd never done a damn thing wrong in his life…well, alright, several stupid, boyish things, but nothing to warrant getting mixed up with the mob.

 _Unless he was in the wrong place at the wrong time_ , she told herself, feeling sick to her stomach.

Jane nodded, "They believe he was taken to the old diggings, you know, where the coal mines used to be. There's a whole hive of criminal activity down there, it's like a safe house for them, their own private empire." She got to her feet, snapping her bag shut with a click.

"They call it the Underworld."

* * *

 **A/N:** There were a _lot_ of possibilities I thought through fori how to include Maleficent in _Radiant Creatures._ This one seemed the most appealing, and I think it fits the old school soap opera tone of the story more.

And, as for the Underworld...I'm borrowing more from the side of me that was influenced by _Twin Peaks_ for that concept. Without giving too much away, there was something about the idea of a hive of corruption/malice/etc. just tucked away from the quintessential small town that I thought would be fun to explore.

Chapter 7 is currently slated for next Friday, September 2! My semester will be in full swing by then, which may necessitate minor schedule changes further down the road, but for now, this format suits me nicely.

Thanks for reading!


	7. Go West, Young Man

Chapter 7, Go West, Young Man

 **A/N:** Sorry for the lateness of the hour...well, it's late here on the East Coast, but whatevs. My semester is kicking up again and, though it isn't as insane as some of my past ones, I do have more of a time crunch. This may effect update days more later on, but for now we're still cool. Also, enjoy the longest chapter so far! Apologies if this is a turn-off, but I do tend to write _big_ , and there's a lot of content in this chapter.

Do let me know if it's too crazy or just the _right_ amount of crazy. Hoping you enjoy the read!

* * *

The ash tray was a graveyard of cigarette stubs, some still smoking faintly, thin tendrils curling up into the lazy circling blades of the ceiling fan.

"You shouldn't have talked to the reporter woman in the first place!" snarled D.A. Hartford, lighting yet another cig, beady eyes boring into Ratcliffe with a bloodthirsty singlemindedness.

"She had a right to an interview on principle, Octavia," said Ratcliffe, drumming his fingers on the desk, "I had no way of knowing she'd try sneaking a peek at my notes…"

"Your notes shouldn't have been on your goddamn desk in the first place!" Hartford snatched the manila envelope in question out of Yuffie's hands before she could even blink.

As she flipped through the ledger, Yuffie gave Squall a hapless shrug, which he took to mean ' _Better him than us, right?_ ' Squall supposed she had a point, there. Thank goodness for small favors and all that.

"She didn't make an appointment, I had no time to file…"

"You're the Police Commissioner, Ratcliffe, nobody's asking you to kiss the ass of every blue-shoes news hound who comes to the door. You call the shots, they can't complain. What kind of ass-backwards force are you running, here?"

"I know it's not a big consolation," said Yuffie, "but it's possible she didn't see too much. It was mostly the data we got on the two cars…just a load of numbers, she wouldn't know what she was looking at…"

Hartford held the ledger up for them to see. Squall observed Yuffie's usual intimidating columns of data…the girl was a human computer, a real whiz at stats. License plate I.D's, makes and models, a few crabbed abbreviations that probably made sense only to Yuffie and…in the margin, a note in red ink, underlined three times, ' _Styx and Stones?_ '

Yuffie muttered something that sounded decidedly like, "Well, shit." As Ratcliffe harrumphed, "I was simply making note on Detective Kisaragi's own theory regarding the model of car used by the Styx and Stones…"

"Point is, there's no way she didn't miss _that_ ," said Squall, pointedly trying not to sound accusatory, "She's gonna know we have a lead. Not necessarily a bad thing."

"Spoken like a honest cop," huffed Hartford, "Sorry to break it to you, Detective, but the press doesn't give two shits about facts and theories, long as it sounds pretty enough. Tell them some snore about cars and plate I.D's and they put it on Page 14, right next to the church hall fundraiser. Tell them those cars may have been driven by a notorious crime ring and it's front page news."

"We can always say she was snooping," said Yuffie, "She had no business looking at that file."

"And that file had no business being out there in the first place," added Squall, with a look at Ratcliffe, "That'll just backfire on us."

"The situation the way it is, the last thing we need is to be regarded as incompetent." Said Ratcliffe, jowls quivering.

Hartford rolled her eyes, "I'd suggest we take the bitch to court; breech of journalistic ethics, etcetera, but the media would have a circus. They hate seeing one of their own get taken to task."

"So we ignore it," said Yuffie, as if it were the easiest solution in the world, "Focus on the case at hand, make sure we don't look incompetent by getting something done."

"All those words and a nickel will get me five cents, Detective," said Hartford, "Unless you've got a plan of action, I'd keep that trap of yours shut for a blessed change." Her eyes flicked from Yuffie's face to a spot lower down, the implication quite clear.

To her credit, Yuffie didn't let that bother her, barreling on, "We have the Styx and Stones lead. Let's work on it, it's the best we've got." She looked pointedly at Squall, who nodded.

"Yuffie's right about the cars. Hades' people all drive Bentleys, that's nothing new. There's a legacy of abduction there too. The Styx and Stones have a history of doing business with houses of ill repute."

"The sex trade connection, again." Ratcliffe raised his eyebrows, "If we pursue the line that the case of these boys is wrapped up with the missing women…"

"That's a nasty thought," said Yuffie, scratching at the back of her neck.

"You don't want to forget the Earthshaker thug, that Riku," put in Hartford, "Last person to see that girl, quiet as a clam in questioning, broke out of his cell…" she glared at Ratcliffe, who made some more coughing noises as if he that made him impervious to her accusations, "…and made straight for the town limits. Doesn't exactly scream 'innocent victim of circumstance' to me." She looked at Squall, "Leonhart said it himself, the kid was covering his ass."

"He's sitting on something, that's clear," Squall allowed, feeling both women's eyes on him but trying not to look directly at either, "Something happened that night that he doesn't want us to know about."

"He's not wrapped up in this," Yuffie insisted, that stubborn flare she usually reserved for the trickiest suspects coming out in full force, "For all that tough-guy bravado, he's just a scared kid in way over his head. What do kids do when they're scared? They run."

"Need a shovel to dig through all that bull?" snorted Hartford, "Spare me the 'troubled street urchin' claptrap, I'm more than tired of it. Somebody broke him out of that cell, and somebody met him in that tunnel. You ask me, that may have been the backup coming along to give him a ride out of town."

"Payment for services rendered?" Ratcliffe chuckled at his own wit, seeming a little more comfortable, either with the suggestion, or the fact that Hartford was now directing her hostility toward somebody else.

"The other kid was a liability; they could've done anything to _him_." Continued Hartford, "not that there aren't customers of all types in that line of work…"

Yuffie shuddered, prompting Hartford to roll her eyes, "Forgive me if I've upset your delicate sensibilities, _Detective_. Fucked up things happen, we try our damndest to put a stop to it. Perfect solution? No, but it's the job we do."

Yuffie stepped forward as if to protest, but Squall put a staying hand on her arm, keeping her in place. he figured she wouldn't thank him later, but it was still better than her putting her neck out for no reason.

"I know that, Madame District Attorney," said Yuffie, evenly, "I just stand by my theory, that's all."

"Why don't we stick to what we already know?" offered Squall, stepping between the two women, "These two boys, innocent or guilty, are more than likely in the custody of the Styx and Stones, for whatever reason."

"Pity we can't just launch a raid into that whole blasted sinkhole," said Ratcliffe, reaching into his desk to produce a worn map of the defunct coal mines that Hades had converted into his own personal capital city, "There's more red tape tying that district up than I like to think about." He lifted his eyes to Squall, who got the meaning at once.

"Time was you could kick a door down, show 'em a badge and have them all groveling on their knees," Hartford shook her head, exhaling a thin stream of smoke, "Hades is a clever little prick, make no mistake."

Perhaps picking up on Ratcliffe's attention, Hartford also regarded Squall, "You have some experience here, don't you?"

Squall had to nod his assent, but he added, "Hades never did more business than he needed with the biker gangs, not when I was there. A few special circumstances, but I never saw too much of him."

"You know the Underworld, though." Said Yuffie brightly, "Surely you guys remember the drug bust in the South Quarter. That was his baby."

"Damn pretty baby, then," commented Hartford, "Think you can make another?"

Squall tried to ignore Yuffie beaming at him as though she'd just done him the best favor he could ever have asked for.

"That was a complicated bust, took a lot of planning. Hades and his people know me by now, I'm not sure we could copy it."

"Perhaps not for a full-scale rescue attempt," said Ratcliffe, "But perhaps for a reconnaissance. Discover whether or not any of these boys are there, where they are being kept and how. You have a great skill in this area, Leonhart. A certain…subtlety…" his eye flicked for half a second to Yuffie, "…that some others lack."

"That's settled, then," said Hartford, though Squall wasn't sure it had been, really, "This one will go down on recon. If this reporter squeals, we can say we're taking action without lying..."

"What about the girls?" asked Yuffie, "And the guy who broke Riku out of his cell?"

"You seemed thrilled enough that this was all connected before, Detective, what changed your mind?"

"No, I'm not saying it isn't connected. I'm just not sure we'll find all the answers in the Underworld. Why put all our eggs in one basket?"

"Detective Kisaragi," began Ratcliffe, "We weren't suggesting focusing all our energy on just this one lead. I was just entertaining the notion of putting you on the search for this other character, the one who jumped his bail. He _is_ our central suspect in the break out, is he not?"

"And a grand difficult time he had of it, didn't he?" said Hartford with a biting acidity, "He'd have had better luck robbing Fort Knox."

"Octavia, the manner of the break out is not nearly as relevant…."

"Try telling the media that. Entire police station shut down by the criminal genius of some high school dropout …"

"Schooled on the streets of life," put in Yuffie automatically, but Ratcliffe and Hartford were engaged in yet another of their spit-flinging shouting fests, and neither of them seemed to have any notice for the younger detectives.

Rolling her eyes, Yuffie left the room, Squall close behind her. The dispatch was quieter at this point in the late afternoon. The assorted group of Mother, Grandmother and Restaurateur must have left while they were in the meeting. Somehow, that made it easier to think about this case. Simpler to approach it from a more detached, procedural direction without the pale, wan woman sitting in the corner, eyes sad, lifting her head up every minute as though waiting for a sign.

"Why the long face?" prompted Yuffie as they approached their designated cubicle, "Well, longer than usual."

"I'm thinking."

"You're not pissed off, are you?" she pulled a chair back from the desk they shared and dug a bag of chips out from a drawer, snapping it open with a resounding popping noise that caused several heads to turn, as though looking for a hostage taker.

"Why should I be pissed off?"

"Because you only look like that when you're pissed off, and I think I pissed you off." She held the open bag under his nose, but Squall waved it away.

"I was complimenting you back there! That was a real good case, you did a great job."

"Half that bust was luck, Yuffie, I've told you this. If the shipment hadn't been late coming in…"

"You improvised, you're good at that! Not as good at me," she popped a chip into her mouth with a cheerful crunch, "But good. You'd do great on this case, Squall."

He noted a touch of something else in her voice as she said that, but wasn't sure it if it was sadness or jealousy. He'd never known Yuffie to be a jealous type, but she _was_ competitive.

"I'd gladly switch places with you," he told her, crossing her legs and getting a notepad out from his own drawer.

"The search for the erstwhile Axelrod?" Yuffie shrugged, "Boring. Twenty-year old bail jumper with no cash on hand. If he got any farther than the city limits, I'd give him a medal."

"Boring may be preferable to going back down there."

Yuffie's smile faded and she set the bag down, "Oh. Right. Sorry, I should have realized…"

He shook his head, "Nah, you were just pimping me out to the boss. I think I'm supposed to be grateful, buy you dinner or something."

Yuffie laughed, shaking the already half-empty bag of chips, " _This_ is dinner. Get me a KitKat from the vending machine and we can split dessert."

Squall smiled for her benefit, putting a pen to the notepad in his lap and just as quickly putting it aside, "I should have done a better job keeping Hartford off your back. The woman's out for your blood, you know."

"Probably jealous of my insane figure," Yuffie shrugged, "Not your fault, anyway; I should learn to just keep my head down before she lops it off."

"Funny." Remarked Squall, his eye going past Yuffie to a figure a few desks away, who had just emerged from the bathrooms.

Yuffie turned around to see what she was seeing, and raised her eyebrows, "Your protégé?"

"That's a word for it. Poor guy."

"Seems to be taking it all pretty well, actually," said Yuffie, "Quiet, I guess, but who isn't in this place? Well, myself excluded."

"One second," Squall told her, getting to his feet. Yuffie nodded, though she seemed to have had a sudden thought, and grabbed at the hem of his shirt before he could go too far.

"Go easy on him, okay?" she told him.

"I will," Squall assured her, already walking off.

Saix was working in a ledger when Squall came up beside his desk. Mostly numbers and roughly sketched line graphs. Probably traffic accident stats, Squall had given Saix that sleepy task last month, and he'd been steadfastly committed to it ever since.

"How's it going?" asked Squall, coming up alongside him.

Saix looked up, "Can't complain," he lowered the pen, a nervous looking half-smile on his face, "What's up? You look preoccupied."

"It's nothing. Just the Comish and the DA comparing egos. You know how it is."

"Guess I do," Saix nodded to the chair next to him, and Squall took it, if only to make Saix feel more comfortable.

 _No need to mince words._

"Yuffie's been put in charge of finding Axel."

Saix looked up at him, his expression unchanged, "I see." he was quiet for a short time more, "So are you relieved or upset?"

"I was going to ask you the same question." Squall offered a faint smile of his own, "You were so keen to tag along with me yesterday to see him, I figured…"

"That I'd object to him being a wanted man?" Saix shook his head, "Yesterday was different, man. Routine questioning about a missing suspect. Today he _is_ a missing suspect. Am I upset about that? Yes, but only because of what Axel did. The sooner he's found the better."

"That's a very mature way of looking at it."

"Would you rather I tied myself to the flagpole and go on hunger strike 'till his name is cleared?"

"I'm just saying it's natural to be a little riled up about it. He's your friend…"

"We lost touch," he said it shortly, with no room for argument, "Yeah, I still care about him, but Axel was always about Axel. You could do whatever you wanted to keep him out of trouble, and he'd grin, say thanks, and get in trouble again right after. I got tired of it."

"Then you're smarter than a lot of us." Squall toyed with the leather strap of his watch. He'd never been good at talking about these kind of things, but Yuffie had been right about Saix being a sort of apprentice for him. He was a good kid, bright and with a handy skill-set. They had a few things in common, as well, Squall couldn't help but think, yet he wasn't sure how best to say that without coming off as preachy.

"It's hard," he said at last, "when you do what we do, to separate things like that. Friends and suspects, that kind of thing. Sometimes you might feel like you're betraying your loyalties. I get it."

"Well, you don't have to worry about me." Said Saix, "I see no point staying loyal to someone who never bothered to return the favor."

Squall nodded, "Point taken." He tapped the ledger, "I'd better let you get back to work. I've got a job of my own to plan."

A practically impossible job with a very vague goal and dozens of pitfalls for failure. Squall wasn't going to blame Yuffie for planting the idea in Hartford's head, though. Sooner or later somebody was going to suggest it, and Squall felt if somebody had to do it, it may as well be him.

Saix spoke up as Squall was getting to his feet, "Just tell Yuffie to be careful."

"She usually is. She'll tell you that, herself."

"I know." Saix may as well have been describing the weather, "But Axel's different. It's almost impossible not to trust him."

Squall thought he saw Saix's fingers go to the sleeve of his sweater, like a kneejerk reaction…

He didn't mention it though. Squall knew better than most that there were some things you didn't share with other guys on the Force. He kept his own secrets, his own broken loyalties, let Saix keep his.

* * *

Axel rode into Twilight Township, fittingly enough, just when the sun was starting to sink behind the western ridge of hills that rimmed the town, bathing the whole place in the signature orange and gold colors that made it worth anything in the first place.

The journey, usually a question of one or two hours on a good bike, had taken the better part of a day. For one reason because the machine he'd weaseled out of Seifer last night (his own bike still being woefully out of repair, and his 'Vette still wrongfully imprisoned, as they were) was nothing if not arthritic. For another reason, well…Axel _was_ on the run from the law. He had no intention of crawling up and down major highways, thank you very much.

He didn't bother checking if people he passed in cars spared him more than a cursory glance as he rode past them. Sure, the police were looking for a red-headed young adult on a motorcycle, but _nobody_ was looking for a red-headed young adult on a motorcycle wearing a _helmet._

Axel hated helmets. Sure, safety first and all that other noise, and he did value his brains enough not to want them scattered across the pavement like stale jelly, but helmets were so…smothering. Axel's hair was made to trail behind him on the wind, like tongues of fire from an Olympic runner's torch, not stay bundled up under some badly-insulated portable prison.

Not to mention helmets smelled rank terrible after about half an hour of wearing them, but Axel figured for the sake of his grand escape he couldn't be too careful.

The clock tower in the center of Twilight was just chiming six thirty as he passed into the town limits, the tower facing him at the end of main street, its bells chiming their heralding cries across the city, as though welcoming him home.

 _No place like it, I guess,_ Axel thought, feeling if not nostalgic, then somehow older than he really was. The fact that Twilight really hadn't changed all that much since he'd left somehow only made that feeling more profound.

Old folks sitting on the stoops of red-brick buildings nodded dazedly as his passed them. Children playing soccer in narrow alleys and cramped roundabouts scattered, laughing, as he drove past. Axel was tempted to catch a badly aimed ball as he passed, only to toss it back to the kids…real 'suave and sexy rebel' and all that. But that probably counted as drawing unnecessary attention to himself. Bikes in and of themselves were already easily spotted enough, more's the pity.

He passed two sets of cops as he navigated the streets. One pair giving a blue minivan a parking ticket, and another set yakking it up outside a jewelry store they may or may not have been guarding.

None of them took much notice of him as he passed, which was all for the better. He might slip through the cracks yet.

Axel had the rough approximation of the address he was looking for, having made himself familiar with it just in case of emergency.

 _Risky as all hell move to make,_ he told himself, _Not like I have a lot of options, though._

He wondered where Riku had decided to go, and was again hit with the sinking knowledge that it may be a very long time before he ever saw his friend again. Poor guy, up to his neck in a mess he'd wanted no part in.

 _Maybe I should just hang up the whole 'interacting with others' act. All it does is turn everything to shit._

Like many non-metropolitan metropolitan areas, Twilight was split along an imaginary line formed by the elevated train tracks. One dip under the red-brick arches of the main bridge that ran from Main to Market and Axel's surroundings went from quaintly dilapidated shop fronts and street urchins to obsessively kept front gardens and fat, dozing cats sitting in diamond-paneled windows.

The house he was looking for was the third in a block of similar houses that for all intents and purposes were connected, a single column of red stucco walls with brown shingled roofs and green-shuttered windows, each one with a square of front yard walled off in reddish brown brick.

"127, 128…" Axel read the brass numbers next to each door as he slowed the bike down to pass them, "129."

He pulled the bike to a stop outside 129, taking in the narrow cobblestoned walkway, bordered by low-growing magnolia bushes. Even in the dead of autumn, there was a pretty, golden orange glow to the garden. It was all so…neat looking. Axel had to admit, he was impressed.

There was a window open on the first floor, from which strands of music wafted out into the otherwise quiet street. Drums and tambourines, from the sound of it, with guitars and jubilant voices singing on top. Happy noises.

Looking up and down the block to make sure he was, indeed, unobserved, Axel took off his helmet, allowing his sweat-matted hair to fall into his face. His helmet under his arm, Axel made sure he looked reasonably presentable before he approached the door. Ran a tortoiseshell comb through his hair, to no avail, rubbed the dust of the road off his jeans, made sure his jacket was straight.

"Go and get 'em," he told himself, stepping up to the door and ringing the bell.

At first there was no noise besides an incessant and unrelenting squawking, loud and unexpected enough that it caused Axel to step back with a muffled curse.

Then, a thudding of footsteps on stairs, a voice calling out, "Shut up, shut up, shut up, _coming_!" and the door opened.

Axel wasn't sure who was more uncomfortable. Himself, or the half-naked guy dripping wet in the doorway.

The guy brushed a lock of soggy dirty blond hair out of his eyes, blinking stupidly, as a slow but sure smile crossed his face.

"No fucking way…" he leaned on the open door, "Axel?"

"Hey, Dem." Axel lifted his hand in a salute, unable to hide that it really was good to see him again, all things considered, "Bad time?"

"You know me, man, no time's a bad time. But…" more squawking from inside the house. Demyx turned back inside, "Shut _up_ , you dickface!" he turned back to Axel, shrugging, "Sorry. Wanna come inside?"

"I was hoping you'd ask that. You know my kind can't intrude unless were invited in."

"Huh?" Demyx looked blank.

"It's…it's vampires," Axel explained, feeling awfully Moonboyish as he did so, "You know, a vampire can't go into your house unless you..."

"Just get inside, Ax. I've freezing my precious parts off out here." Demy stepped aside, gesturing for Axel to enter.

"What a goshdamned loss that would be, eh?" Axel breezed into the house, taking a look around. Considering this house had a house on either side of it, it wasn't particularly big, but it managed to somehow be bright and cozy in its crampedness. There was a rich red and cream carpet on the floor, leading to a winding staircase with a metal railing, fashioned in the shape of twining vines.

To the right, Axel glimpsed a tiny living room: green sofa and brown armchairs arranged around a coffee table and T.V, lit from the back by two windows.

"Nice digs." He commented, shrugging off his jacket.

"Nicer than the Dugout, at any rate," Demyx winked, winding a finger around the shark tooth he still wore around his neck…apparently, even in the shower.

"You remember the Dugout?" Axel cocked an eyebrow.

"So do you." Demyx shrugged, "One sec, I gotta turn off the shower, or else it's twenty years bad juju."

"Go to it, Rainman." Axel capped Demyx on the shoulder, letting him scurry up the stairs and out of sight.

 _He's taking it spectacularly well_ , Axel mused, _But what else is new?_

There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask, even if Demyx didn't want to ask him any. He supposed they would have to wait, however. It had been risky enough coming here, but the sad sack fact of it was that there was really no other place he could think of.

Axel strolled into the living room, figuring he might as well make himself comfortable, and draped his jacket over the back of a nearby armchair. The music was loudest here, which made sense given the record player was positioned precariously on the windowsill, shaking just a little with every quarter turn. Axel recognized the song and rolled his eyes.

' _Brown girl in the ring/Tra la la la la_ / _There's a brown girl in the ring/Tra la la la la…_ '

"No accounting for taste," Axel muttered, moving his attention to the metal trellis in the corner of the room, on which a series of overflowing geranium vases were positioned, interspersed with twisty glass figurines Axel supposed were really classy, if he had the right eye for them.

One of the glassworks was of a lit flame, bright orange and yellow, the currents of color twisting through the otherwise clear glass as though trapped inside. Letting out a wry laugh, Axel came up to have a closer look. In the bright sunset light, the glass flame looked lit from within, like one of those too-cool-to-be-used decorative patio lamps they sold at garden shops.

Looking back toward the stairs for good measure, Axel reached out to touch the flame, just to rotate it on its pedestal, watch the light play on it.

Something squawked again, and Axel almost knocked the flame to the floor as he jerked back, "Son of a Jesus bitch!" he swore, rounding on his heel and at last figuring out just where the racket was coming from.

In the opposite corner, close to a glass-fronted bookcase, was a brass cage hanging from a hook in the ceiling, the way a potted plant might. The narrow bars were fashioned in the shape of twining vines in what Axel believed was called the _Art New Vow_ style (he wasn't entirely uneducated, after all).

Instead of more flowers, however, this cage paid host to the most hideous bird he'd ever seen. Blue and gray, with a shiny, curved yellow beak that sort of slipped through the bars it was so big. It was studying Axel with a beady black eye, looking both annoyed and somewhat sleepy for all the noise it made.

"Oh…um…hello there," Axel greeted it, making sure he hadn't destroyed anything before coming closer to the birdcage, "Aren't you a gorgeous freak of nature?"

He reached out his hand as though to pet its beak (Bill? He wasn't sure at this point), but the feathered fuckwit made a snap for his hand.

"Hey, hey, hands off the merchandise!" Demyx returned to the room, now dressed in a pair of faded ripped jeans, and a dark blue tee-shirt on which somebody had crudely stenciled the words ' _Cardinal Points_ ' in white. He's tied his hair back with rubber bands, the shoulder-length wave of blond now bunched up in a sort of funny-looking tiny ponytail.

Silly as he might look, however, he had all the air of a guy who owned the world and had no worries because of it. Axel found himself missing his childhood more and more, at the same time regretting ever coming back here in the first place.

"Making friends, Axel?" Demyx nodded to the bird.

"Would this delightful specimen be dickface, by any chance?"

"Dickface only to friends," Demyx retrieved a plastic case of dried berries from a spot on the bookcase and held it under the bird's beak, smiling lazily as it went to work with gusto on the meal, "His professional name is Zazu. My idea."

"Of course it was."

"He makes this yelling sound that sounds kinda like 'Zazu', y'see. Only sometimes, like when he's in a really good mood or wants to piss people off. Sis hates him."

"I can imagine that," muttered Axel, feeling reassured by the mention of Demyx's sister. Not that he imagined for a second Dem could hold onto a place like _this_ , all his own, but it was still good to know he hadn't come all the way here for nothing but a lukewarm reunion and a bird show.

"You gotta see this, it's _sick_ ," Demyx hurried over to the coffee table and pulled a peeling leather case out from under it. Axel noted the same ' _Cardinal Points_ ' stencil on the side, between a faded peace sign sticker and what seemed to be a crude caricature of Larry Fine, of Three Stooges fame.

"My stomach's turning already," quipped Axel as Demyx retrieved a well-worn and well-loved sitar half his height from the case and balanced it on his knee.

"Aw, shut up," Demyx told him, grinning.

"That the same one from back in the day?"

"The one and only," he tried a practice strum, winked at Zazu, and began to sing along with the record, " _All had water run dry…_ "

He pointed grandly at Zazu, who blinked superiorly at them before shrieking something that maybe sounded like ' _Got nowhere to wash my clothes_ ', if you covered your ears and shut your eyes.

"Beng a deng," finished Axel with a shrug, "Keep at it, man, and you two'll be headlining in Vegas before you know it."

"He's still learning, but he's getting there. Genius takes time." He set the sitar down on the sofa, patting a spot next to him for Axel to sit.

Aware of how sore his rear was after a day of riding (on a less-than-serviceable bike, but beggars can't be choosers), Axel obliged, withering only just under the redolent odor of aftershave and styling gel that oozed from Demyx.

"So…Cardinal Points," Axel indicated the logo on Demyx's shirt, "That you and Zazu?"

Demyx blinked at him.

"You know…like the bird? Cardinal? That an…act you do, or something?"

"Zazu isn't a cardinal," Demyx replied, rolling his eyes, "He's a…" he trailed off, apparently trying to think of something.

"A dickface, my apologies."

"Cardinal Points, dingus, y'know, like on a compass? North, south, east, west…"

"Yeah, yeah, I finished fourth grade, Dem, I get it."

"It's my band." Demyx nodded his head smugly, as if he'd just announced he won the lottery or something, "Me and a few guys from the south bend, we're the Cardinal Points."

"Oh." Axel nodded, having a vivid recollection of a fourteen-year-old boy in flip-flops and parachute pants making 'music' on a sitar he could barely lift, blissfully unaware of how determinedly everybody else in the Dugout was trying to ignore him.

" _You didn't have to bring your kid brother, do you?_ "

" _No, but he would've just followed us everywhere. He's like that_."

By the time Axel had gotten used to him, he was already heading east, wind in his hair, Saix at his side, and the earth shaking under the wheels of his first bike.

"So…are you, like… _north_?" Axel offered.

Demyx blinked, his fingers playing on the strings without him seeming to realize they were, producing a soft, hypnotic kind of tune, "Huh…never thought about it."

He lapsed into a ruminative silence, playing aimlessly and unconsciously as Axel grew both more comfortable with his surroundings and less sure of how wise it had been to come here.

After what seemed like ten minutes of this, Axel said, "So…you're probably wondering what's the deal with the visit."

"You're running from the cops," said Demyx in a far-off, dreamy kind of voice.

" _What?_ " Axel turned fast enough to get a crick in his neck.

"What, it's not true?"

"No…I mean, it is, I just…I didn't think you _knew_."

"It was on the news," Demyx stopped playing, nodding toward the T.V.

"You watch the _news_?"

"Right before my stories, yeah."

" _Stories?_ "

"You broke some other biker guy out of jail, right?" Demyx sat up, his eyes alight with an adventurous glee, "What, is he like your blood brother, or something? You know, you cut your arms open, and you mixed blood together. Hardcore shit, man, what if you get HPV or some…"

"He was…he _is_ a friend of mine, and we never cut each other open. Jesus, Dem, what do you think I've been _doing_ all these years?"

"Running from the cops." Demyx said with a shrug, "Forgive me if I misunderstood your noble intentions, oh Earthshaker." He plucked a few more notes, "So, you had nothing to do with him vamoosing like he did?"

"Vamoosing?" Axel ran his hand through his hair, "What, you mean breaking him out? Man, I already admitted to that, so if you want to call the state hotline, or whatever…"

"No, I mean… Don't you know?" Demyx lowered the sitar, sounding genuinely concerned, "That guy you broke out, he and some other kid were chased down to the Destiny city limits."

 _Some other kid?_ Axel thought, thinking of when he'd last seen Riku, riding away from the police station, into the heart of the storm, a hint of his laugh trailing back to him on the wind. He wasn't sure how, but Axel had a feeling he knew who the other kid had been. It made no sense, but Axel could think of nobody else.

"What do you mean 'chased'? Who chased them, the cops?"

"You really don't know." Said Demyx again.

Axel slammed his hand against the back of the couch, frustrated, "No, Demyx, I haven't had time to keep up with the news of the world! Like you observed, I am 'on the run'."

Zazu squawked again, and Axel cried out, "Shut up, dickface!" before he could stop himself, looking back to Demyx, "What happened?"

Demyx shrugged, "No one knows. They went into the tunnel one way, and nobody saw them come out the other. People figure they were kidnapped or something, same as all those girls who've been going missing. You know, one of them was…"

"Son of a bitch," Axel muttered, leaning against the back of the sofa, "Talk about 'out of the frying pan, into the fire'…" Yet try as he might to make to light of the situation, he couldn't.

Riku was missing, presumably abducted? And all because Axel had decided to let him loose, to cover _his_ ass for a change, be a good person and all that.

If anything, this _did_ confirm that Riku hadn't taken Kairi, or whatever her face. Not that Axel had believed he had for a second, but other people had.

But who, and why? Axel figured there was no point asking Demyx for his opinions, but he had no time to ask even if he'd wanted to, for at that moment, there was a sound of a car pulling up in front of the house, and the clear slam of a door shutting, cutting into the sleepy music of the living room like a gunshot.

Demyx was on his feet so fast he almost tripped over his own sitar, as Zazu set to crowing again, "Shit!" he muttered, going to the window and taking a furtive peek out between the curtains, "Shit." Though he didn't sound entirely upset, instead turning to Axel with a goofy sort of grin on his face, "She's gonna go postal when she sees you."

"You know, I had a feeling she would" muttered Axel, standing as well. He wasn't sure whether the sweat beading on his brow and the racket his heart was making against his ribs meant he was terrified or excited.

 _You've handled worse than this,_ he told himself, _Just be yourself. She'll understand. she's cool like that._

Or she had been, once upon a time. Demyx hadn't changed much, but his sister…

The door was unlocked with a clear click, and a load, resounding voice called out, "Dem, why the hell is there a bike blocking the driveway? I swear to God, if…"

She appeared in the living room doorway and stopped as if petrified.

" _Axel?_ " she studied him, a familiar steel in those hazel eyes. Not anger, not recognition, just determination, same as ever.

"Hello Larxene," he greeted her, trying to stand firm under the weight of that stare, but it had never been easy.

She'd changed, certainly. Not as much as Saix, yet not as little as her brother. She wore her hair up now, tied back in a bun, though strands were loose and falling onto her forehead, like it remembered how it has used to flow freely behind her, blown back by the wind off the twisting mountain roads.

She dressed in a green blouse and gray skirt, a snap-latch handbag over her arm, yet the faded blue scarf around her neck was the same one she'd once worn around her waist, proud as a lady of war ought to be. She'd won that in a race against some burly Helga-type back when she was sixteen, and had treasured it as a trophy ever since. It was good to see she hadn't stopped the tradition.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded, tossing her purse into a nearby armchair and crossing the room to him. She wore perfume now, too, Axel noticed. Faint and flowery, but not _too_ girly, he thought.

"Blunt as ever. Glad to see that."

"Good, because that's all you're going to see." She looked from him to Demyx, hoop earrings shaking back and forth like leaves in a wind, "Why are you here?"

"Your bro let me in," Axel nodded to Demyx, who was shaking his head furiously, looking stricken, "Nice place by the way, girl. You've come up in the world."

" _I_ have," insisted Larxene, pointing to Demy with a long, aquamarine nail, " _He_ hasn't! This isn't his house…"

"I live here too!"

"…he has no right to just let people in whenever he likes. You know he's a fugitive, don't you?"

"Him too?" asked Axel, raising his eyebrows.

"I was talking to _Demyx_!" she rounded on him, still addressing her brother, "The police want him for bail jumping and aiding and abetting!"

"Don't know if you guys know this, but I was sorta aiding and abetting the guy who posted my bail, so they may cancel each other out…"

"He needed our help!" said Demyx, "What was I supposed to do, slam the door in his face?"

"Dammit, _yes_!" Larxene shut her eyes, rounding on the record player with a fury, "My God, that same damn song, over and over and _over_ again, Jesus!"

She crossed to the windowsill and took the needle off the record, bringing an end to the tale of the brown girl, the ring, and all those fried fish and Johnny cakes.

"Song _was_ pretty obnoxious," Axel muttered, prompting Demyx to look at him, as though betrayed.

Larxene crossed back to Axel, visibly struggling to compose herself, "You should have taken the hint when I didn't answer your phone call."

"So you _knew_ it was me!" said Axel, unable to hide a smile. He'd, at first, been worried Larxene had never answered his prison call because she hadn't known he was calling. Somehow it was more consoling to know that she remembered him, even if she still hadn't picked up.

"Educated guess, I heard all about you hitting that kid."

"Sick 'Vette, by the way," added Demyx, "Graduated from bikes?"

"Don't answer that." Larxene held a finger out to Demyx to shut him up.

"Wasn't planning to, first off, and I hit the kid by accident."

"That's reassuring." Larxene smiled, showing a gleam of white teeth in that pale, lightly freckled face of hers, "You thought, after all these years, after everything that happened, I would post your bail?"

Loathe as he was to admit it, that did disarm Axel. Despite the living room straight out of a _Good Housekeeping_ photo spread, despite the successful businesswoman get-up (What did she do, anyway? There was so much Axel didn't know), despite the frigging singing dickface bird in its cage, it seemed Larxene still felt as deeply as she had back then.

 _That's the problem, with you, I guess,_ he thought, _Everybody…Larxene, Moonboy, Riku, they take everything that happens with them to the end, and all you want to do is go on like nothing ever happened._

At last, he did manage to say, "You were the first person I thought of."

Larxene blinked, looking away from him to tuck some stray hairs back into her bun. He heard her breathing carefully, wringing her hands with slow deliberation in front of her.

"When you called," she said, in measured tones, barely louder than a whisper, "I almost picked up, you know. But I saw Luxia standing, right there," she pointed to the doorway she'd only just come in from, "And I came back to my senses."

"Luxia?" repeated Axel, noting Demyx behind Larxene, sticking his finger into his mouth and miming gagging noises.

Larxene rounded on him, "Could you get out?" she cried, picking up his sitar case and tossing it over to him. This must have happened on a regular basis, as Demyx had no trouble catching it despite his lanky frame, scurrying up the stairs, looking both put out and delightedly amused.

"Luxia…" said Axel again, "Oh. Yeah, I think I remember something about you and…"

"Marluxia. He lives here, we work together."

"Dem doesn't seem to like him."

"Of course he doesn't, because Demyx doesn't like people who don't put up with his freeloader B.S."

"He has a band."

"Don't get me started on that," Larxene pointed at him warningly.

Knowing he probably shouldn't, Axel said, "You used to like music. I remember, we used to ride down to Traverse to catch those Fuse-Jazz dives. You had a good time. Fun."

"Don't play that card with me, Ax, I am still perfectly capable of having a good time. I just have a life to lead now, and responsibilities to maintain, and I can't harbor a wanted criminal in my house."

"I'm not asking for more than a night or two." Axel assured her, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder, though Larxene jerked away.

"Look, I wouldn't have come here if I had anywhere else."

Larxene looked at him coldly, a dry, sharp laugh, almost a cackle escaping her, "So you come to me in an act of desperation, because I am the only option available. Somehow, that sounds terrifyingly familiar, Axel."

"Rene…" Axel began.

"Don't call me that!" she slammed a hand against the back of an armchair, "You don't get to come riding here into the sunset, like some goddamn drifter, to beg for my favor like nothing ever happened! It doesn't work like that."

"Larxene, I'm…" there he was again, about to apologize. He thought of Riku in the alley, rain dripping through his hair, as he thanked him; Moonboy's look of hatred as he walked out of the back room, Larxene's own fiery eyes, standing here in her perfect house still looking raw and hurt as if it had all happened only yesterday…

"I shouldn't have come," he said at last, "You're right. I guess you're gonna want to call the cops now, get me out of your hair. Can't blame you, it was stupid of me to…"

"No," she spoke firmly and decisively, "you're staying here. Tonight, tomorrow, for the weekend, if you have to."

"… _what_?" Maybe it was just his suspicious mind, but this screamed 'trap' to him, "I thought…"

"You thought wrong, what else is new?" her face was still steely cold, yet it appeared to Axel that there was a warmer sort of glow in her eyes, "Luxia's away 'till Monday. Business trip. You can sleep in the attic."

"There's an attic?"

"More like a crawlspace, but you should be right at home." She looked at him, as if daring him to complain, to challenge her. Maybe he was imagining it, but it seemed her gaze lingered on the teardrop tats, as if seeing them for the first time.

"I…" he began, running a hand through his hair, at a loss, "…thanks, Larxene."

"Don't thank me," she told him, picking up her purse from where she'd dropped it, "As I recall, Earthshakers are required to watch each other's backs in times of strife."

"You remember the code?" Axel couldn't keep back a laugh, gratitude overtaking him.

She turned back to face him, looking neither angry or even charitable, "Just that part."

Larxene left the room, her footsteps receding on the stairs. Axel was alone in the living room, the last light of the sunset streaming through the lace curtains as Zazu starting quorking again, in a tune that sounded only vaguely correct.

"Beng-a-deng," Axel supplanted, collapsing onto the sofa with finality.

* * *

The world changed a little every time Sora opened his eyes. First it was a dark car with tinted windows, gliding smoothly along a seemingly impossible number of twists and turns.

Then it was a rough and bumpy cot, beneath a low ceiling, and a bare, flickering light bulb dangling from a wire. The light bulb was the most consistent thing, and Sora could never really move his head much to look away from it. The place smelled musty, the sort of congested, stuffy smell of underground.

Sora remembered the tunnel, the lights rushing past overhead, Riku vaulting over the side of the ramp to land with a jolt to the road. The sharp, sudden contact he'd made with the hood of the car chasing them.

Shortly after that first memory came the first new sensation. A searing, burning pain in his side, sudden and furious as though it had just burst from his skin, like some horror movie monster. He'd opened his eyes fully, wincing at the sudden appearance of the otherwise pretty weak electric light, gasping in pain, a raw, whimpering sound that he may have been embarrassed by had he the sense enough to be embarrassed.

"Now, now, hold still, sonny," said a hushed, raspy voice quite close to Sora's ear, so surprisingly close that Sora jerked in the cot to face him, the pain increasing as he moved.

He saw a bare glimpse of a wrinkled, pinkish face and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, a muttered, "Well, now look what you've done, I'll have to start right from the beginning again…" before he blacked out again.

The pain had dulled somewhat when Sora came to again, just a steady throbbing in his side. For a brief, deluded second Sora could imagine he was just lying at home, dazed from Advil after hurting himself at a practice. A sore muscle, a sprained ankle, _no_ , not a concussion, he'd assure his Mom a dozen times.

He seemed to be alone this time, the light bulb buzzing steadily in its socket. He could make out the ceiling, cracked and sagging with bubbles of moisture. The walls were close together here, like those in a closet, rough and unpainted, pockmarked here and there by little holes.

 _Stay calm_ , he told himself, feeling the rough cotton of the sheet beneath him, _Just relax._ _Figure out where you are and what the hell is going on. Then panic._

When he craned his neck to look behind him, Sora could make out a door, a sturdy metal type that he morosely observed wasn't equipped with a handle, so it probably could only open from outside…or whatever even worse place lay on the other side of it. Judging by the comparative silence in the direction of that door, Sora assumed it was unattended, unguarded.

 _Who'd be guarding it in the first place?_ he asked himself, _Way too quick to jump to the whole action movie scenario, aren't you?_

Then again, considering how he'd ended up in this situation, maybe it wasn't out of the realm of possibility to assume he'd been kidnapped. After all, this cell of his did look something like a dungeon.

He tried to sit up to get a better sense of his bearings, but a new jolt of pain brought him back down.

"Oh man…" Sora panted, moving his hand down to his side. He wasn't wearing his hoodie, he noticed, just his red tee-shirt, now stained a disturbingly darker shade of red in a spot at his right side.

Aware of how clammy his hand had become, Sora went to the hem of his shirt, feeling the wet, warm texture on the rim of a tear he knew hadn't been there before, as he lifted it up to expose the skin beneath…

There was a raw wound on the right side of his torso, a mess of black and red, looking both soft and hard, and smelling worse than anything he'd ever smelled before. A sickeningly sweet, hot odor that brought unbidden images of roadkill steaming on the highway into his head.

There was an uneven crisscrossing pattern of baby blue thread worked across the gash, as though somebody had attempted to sew it shut, with dubious success. Sora could almost feel his own body protesting the makeshift stitches, two opposing forces working against each other, like some gruesome word problem in a physics textbook.

"Oh God…" Sora heard himself speaking, feeling somehow apart from himself. There was no way that…that _thing_ was a part of him, no way at all. He didn't even remember _getting_ that, this was obviously some kind of screwed up joke, a hallucination, some crazy dream…

A deafening slam as the door behind Sora was thrown open, clanging against the wall with enough force to shake the lightbulb on its thin chain, throwing light and shadow around the cell with a dizzying changeability.

A chilly, oily sort of voice accompanied by quick footsteps behind him, "Couldn't do us the favor of dying in your sleep, could you? Things are rarely so easy…"

Sora didn't even think as he rolled out the of cot on the left side, allowing his (relatively) uninjured side to take the brunt of the impact. He wasn't sure he had the strength to stand upright, but this room was about four times smaller than the average football field, and that door was closer to him than the end zone ever was.

 _Die in my sleep? These people wanted me to_ die _in my sleep?_

The reasonable question might have been why they'd bothered to kidnap him in the first place, if that was the case, but Sora figured now wasn't the time for reasonable questions.

He saw a glimpse of gleaming leather shoes staggering back against the wall, heard a startled exclamation, a curse, felt a hand grab for his hair, the whoosh of some steel weapon slashing just short of where he'd been. The door was still open, looking out onto a slightly better lit set of stairs going up. Where those stairs led Sora had no idea, but at least it was somewhere.

Now more or less fully on his feet, Sora breezed out the door, just at the foot of the steps. Before he could take them, however, his pursuer had the keen idea of slamming the door shut behind him, the solid metal making contact with the back of his head.

Sora saw stars, felt the world turn upside down beneath him, and was unconscious again before he'd even hit the ground.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been out cold this time, but the next thing he knew he was prostrate in the cot again, his head pounding something fierce.

"What…" he began, coughing sharply, his throat and the inside of his mouth feeling dry as old sandpaper.

Noting an unfamiliar pressure against his forehead, Sora lifted his hand to investigate, only to find his arm pulled taut at the end of a thin chain rope. He was cuffed to the side of the cot, the rusty ring of metal biting into the skin of his wrist it was so tight.

"I wouldn't pull on that if I were you, sonny. Some have been known to lose hands that way, oh yes…"

Sora recognized the creaky voice from earlier. On closer inspection, he spotted a tiny old man standing near a folding table and chairs that had not been in the room before. He looked sort of like the harmless old coot you might see playing checkers in the park or sitting in the sun on a lazy summer afternoon, with his big, wire rimmed bifocals and a red porkpie hat tilted jauntily on his head. He had a goofy smile too, a big goofball grin that displayed an impressively decayed set of teeth.

 _Stay calm…_ Sora told himself again, _Use your brain. If you can't run out of this, try to talk your way out._

Kairi might have talked her way out if she were here. She'd always been possessed of more reason than Sora, more patience. It's what made her rare lapses in temper so jarring. But no point in thinking about that now.

"W-who are you?" asked Sora, "What's going on?"

"Oho!" the old man nodded excitedly, rosy jowls quivering as he did, "The six honest serving men! who, what, where, when, why, and how. 'How's' the black sheep, y'know, never fit in with the rest..."

 _Shit, he's nuts._

But the old man pressed on, gritting up from his chair to start busying about the things on the table, most of which were too far out of the light for Sora to see very clearly at all.

"You gave us all quite a turn, oh yes, haven't had a spitfire like you in the longest time. P'raps we deserved it, I dunno, about that, not my place, but it seems to me you never should've been a part of all this to begin with, no sir, no sir."

He turned to face Sora, pouring a bubbly brown liquid from a flask into a short glass. Sora noted his sleeve was rolled up past his elbow, revealing a tattoo in dark black ink, pretty fresh from what little Sora knew about tats.

"Is that…um…is that a snake or something?" asked Sora as the man approached, trying to muster up an easy smile. He couldn't fathom what this guy was talking about, but he believed he was at least somewhat sympathetic to Sora's plight.

 _I wasn't supposed to be here_ , Sora repeated it to himself, _What about Riku? They were chasing him, after all._

Was Riku here? Sora hadn't been able to gauge how much Riku knew about these people in the heat of all that had happened in the tunnel, but they had clearly been after him. Sora wasn't sure why and, as much as he might have against Riku and his never-ending spiel of evasion and exact words, he wasn't sure he would wish this place on him, even if he was only being held here on Riku's account.

The man shook his head with a smile, holding the glass up under Sora's nose, the harsh, warm smell of only the strongest kind of liquor stinging his nose and making his eyes water.

"Oh no, no, no, sonny, not a snake, no, no. It's a corkscrew, yes, sonny, but thanks for asking. Sort of like my lucky charm. The lads in the Navy used to call me Johnny Corkscrew, yes, they did."

"Um…okay," said Sora carefully, trying his best to weigh his words here, "Why?"

The old man just winked at him, and made a little circular motion with the fingers of his free hand. Sora wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but he could only imagine Tidus and Selphie could have come up with two dozen horrific interpretations at once.

"Drink up, now." The man insisted, tilting the glass right up to Sora's lips so that he had no choice, "And no spitting it out, no, no. Direct from the Cap'n's personal cellar it is, oh yes, and that stuff don't come cheap."

Figuring he really didn't want to learn just how his captor had gotten that Corkscrew nickname, Sora took a tentative sip of the liquor. He figured it must be scotch or gin or something, but whatever it was, it was so distilled that it burnt like raw alcohol the moment it hit his tongue. Sora retched, but kept it down, coughing all the while. It _did_ succeed in waking him up more fully, though, allowing him to get a better grasp on his bearings.

"There we go, handled that like a proper man, yes, yes, sonny, excellent." The man lowered the barely empty glass, sniffing what remained as though to determine whether or not Sora had spat in it, and then downed the rest, letting out an undignified hiccup of his own.

"Clears the heart s'well as the head, don't it, sonny?" he asked.

The mention of the head reminded Sora of the weight against his forehead. Using his uncuffed hand, he reached up and felt a thick cotton fabric, a bandage wrapped around his head. It was damp in some places, but with sweat, blood, or both Sora couldn't tell.

"Nasty bump you got yourself, oh yes," nodded the man, "Still, s'what you get for trying to take off without leave, and before dinnertime too."

He lifted a tray from the table and returned to Sora, grinning chummily. On the tray was arrayed a ham sandwich, a pickle, and some lumpy beige goo that Sora sincerely hoped was mashed potatoes.

"What…what's this?" he asked as the tray was placed over his knees.

"Dinner, sonny, and more than most get when they're guesting down here, oh, yes."

Sora eyed the food suspiciously. There was no reason the food mayn't be poisoned, yet at the same time, from what Sora had seen of this place such subtleties as poisoning were entirely unnecessary. He picked up the sandwich and took a careful bite. It was cold, and not very tasty, but he wasn't dead, so that was something.

"Um…" Sora began between bites, "you said 'down here'."

"I did, sonny, very good."

"Where is 'down here', exactly?"

The man smiled again, putting his finger against his lip as though Sora had just asked the most scandalous dinner party joke.

"Well, now, sonny, it really is a shame you're here, poor little lad, no idea where's for or what's what, not made for this type of place at all, you catch my meaning. Mayhaps we'd have done better to do away with you at once, but the Cap'n has such a gentle spirit, I tell you he does, made me what I am today, thanks to his mercy, and…"

"Kindly stop wasting air, Smee," came an oily, genteel voice accompanied by the sound of the door opening behind them, "There's precious little of it as it is."

The old man, Smee, gawped at whoever had spoken, apparently finally struck speechless. He nodded a few more times, muttering incoherently, as he scuttled back toward the folding table.

"How is our young mistake behaving?" the speaker sauntered into Sora's line of vision.

He was a tall, thin man, dressed in an impossibly slimy-looking leisure suit, all greens and blues, with a fur-lined leather overcoat trailing lazily off one shoulder. His head of brittle black hair was tied back in a ponytail, cinched by a clasp carved to look like a bird's talon. He regarded Sora with a cold, predatory look in his eye, gloved hands clasped stiffly in front of him.

Sora knew he should probably keep his mouth shut, that from all he'd observed of this place so far, now was not the best time to start forgetting his Ps and Qs and all that, but something about that haughty, arrogant stare got to him. As though he were just some bug pinned to a card in a scientist's lab, nothing but a specimen, an experiment to be poked, prodded and studied. He wasn't having it, not until he got some answers, at least.

"What do you mean, 'mistake'?" he asked sharply, feeling the tray wobble unsteadily on his legs.

The man raised his eyebrows, thin lips curling into a smirk, "He's got a touch of fire in him, doesn't he, Smee?"

"Oh, yes, Cap'n, yes, yes, I said the same thing…"

"Shut up, Smee," he added, amiably as anything, though it hushed Smee up all the same, "You must forgive our good doctor. Spent so much of his life fiddling with scalpels and stitches and he simply forgot that people don't take as kindly to fiddling."

Smee made some feeble noise to that, but the Captain, whoever he was, paid him no mind as he got down to one knee beside Sora, his left hand going to the torn hem of his shirt.

"Wait!" Sora jerked back in protest, the dinner tray shaking wildly as he did so, and the pickle falling to the floor with a resounding splat.

"Shh…" the Captain hushed him, making eye contact just long enough to glimmer enigmatically up at him. The cuff around Sora's wrist felt more restraining than ever as the strong, syrupy scent of the Captain wafting up to his nose, the combined odor of cologne, tobacco and new leather more overpowering than even the strongest whiskey these people could force down his throat.

The Captain lifted up the shirt enough to expose the scar and nodded with a faint smile.

"Smee does serviceable work. Crude, yes, but serviceable, however useless he may seem. Appearances, after all, are deceiving. That is a lesson you learn fast down here, boy. Best not forget it."

He drew his hand back to snap his fingers at Smee, setting him to scurrying about in some dark crevice of the cell that Sora couldn't make out over the Captain's shoulder.

"What…" Sora began, trying not to squirm under the Captain's scrutiny, "what happened to me? Where did I get…?" he gestured, as if to indicate the scar.

The Captain chuckled, "Can't remember, can you, boy? The boy we were _supposed_ to obtain was snatched out from under us, and they shot you to boot."

"Shot me?" Sora repeated, "No, no, that makes no sense, I…"

"Not shot, then. _Grazed_ , if you like. If they'd been aiming for you, rest assured they wouldn't have hit you at all. Count yourself lucky."

Sora tried to remember the tunnel, what had happened after he was thrown against the car. He recalled gunshots, yes, but that somebody had actually _shot him_ … And now some stuttering old gaffer had sewn him up with a frankly disturbingly cheery length of blue thread, as if it was perfectly fine.

Smee handed the Captain a polished wood box, which he busied himself with, his back to Sora.

"Contrary to what you may have heard, scars are nothing to be afraid of," he continued, opening the box with a light thud and a scent of fine wood varnish, "They show how far we have come, and how much we have been through to get there."

Sora wasn't sure how being accidentally shot and kidnapped in place of somebody else counted as coming far in his life, but he supposed arguing with these people wasn't going to get him very far.

The Captain let the leather glove of his right hand fall to the floor as Sora heard an odd scraping sound, and a little pop.

"You fear a scar, and the vermin that did the scarring have power over you." Another scraping sound, one that caused Sora to shudder involuntarily, "But make your scars your own, lad, make them into badges of honor, and they'll never come for you again, because you can't be frightened."

He turned to face Sora again and, before Sora could properly react, he took hold of his face, a cold, unfeeling curve of steel gripping him by the chin, like a claw. At first Sora thought it was a knife, a razor being held to his throat, some torture device or something.

Torture device it may have been, but the metal hook was attached to the Captain's right hand...

 _No,_ Sora realized with a start, _it_ is _his hand._

"Well, lad?" the Captain promised, all easy politeness and a genteel smirk, " _Are_ you frightened?"

Sora struggled for words, feeling the subtle but very real prick of the hook's sharpened blade against his jugular. He swallowed nervously, and twitched as his contracted skin came in and out of contact with the point.

Was he frightened? He should be, Sora knew. No idea where he was, who had taken him or if he would ever get out of here again. He didn't know how long he'd been stuck here, or whether or not anybody else was looking for him, or where they all thought he'd gone…

But he thought of Kairi, also missing, and realized that maybe, just maybe, they were in the same boat here. Maybe she was down here too, alone and scared, no idea what was happening outside whatever dingy cell they were keeping _her_ in.

It didn't make him feel much braver, but it at least leant some of that 'perspective' thing Kairi seemed to approve of.

"N-no," he stammered, holding eye contact for as long as he dared.

The Captain eased Sora's head up in the curve of his hook, running his tongue slowly over his teeth, "Good. I don't believe you for a second, but good all the same. No man admits he's frightened…not even Smee."

"Correct, Cap'n," said Smee, nodding again, "Oh, yes, yes, indeed…"

"We will make use of you yet," the Captain spoke over him, stepping back from Sora to let his head relax on his shoulders again, his breathing heavy and panicked.

"I don't…I don't understand," said Sora, "I thought I was here by mistake…"

"Oh, you are," the Captain spoke assuredly, bending down to recollect the solid, gloved prosthetic right hand he must have been wearing earlier, "Yes, yes, and believe me, lad, there were some that wanted to snuff you out right away as collateral. But not I…no, and luckily the Lord of the Dead understands my sentiments."

"The…the who?"

The Captain shook his head, hook stroking his hand almost lovingly, "We let nothing go to waste here, lad, our existence is too spare for that. You may miss home all you like, but none of us are here for the asking." He moved for the door again, laughing coldly, "You will remain here, struggle, and survive, or you will not. But you do not leave, boy. The Underworld will be your home and it will be your tomb. Best make it later, rather than sooner."

He swept out of the room, the door slamming shut behind him and a scent of smoke and cologne lingering on the air after him.

Even Smee was quiet as he tidied up Sora's mostly untouched dinner, avoiding look him in the face the entire time.

Sora didn't pay much attention to him, though, his mind fixed on the Captain, the 'Lord of the Dead', the Underworld, Kairi, and Riku, wherever they both were, whatever Riku knew, whyever they wanted him.

 _They could have killed me if they wanted to_ , he told himself, _but they're not._

The thought didn't cheer him, but at least it would buy him time to figure something out. He could do that. Maybe if he'd taken a bit of time to think before running into the storm after Riku, things would have turned out differently.

Well, now he had time to plan. According to the Captain, a lifetime. Hopefully, he wouldn't need that long.

* * *

Riku had been lying in his bed staring up at the ceiling, in and out of a kind of trance, for what seemed like hours before somebody came to collect him.

"Yes, yes, I know I'm late, thank you," drawled a voice accompanied by footsteps on the main stairs, "It's Friday night, there's traffic, people going off to have their weekends while I visit this Dickensian pile."

Riku could vaguely make out a stammered rebuttal, presumably Jafar trying to defend himself, but whatever he was saying was lost beneath the loud, bored tones of the woman he was speaking to. Indeed, everything she said sounded as though she was reading dully from a script that both bored and embarrassed her.

"Third door, left side? Christ and carbuncles, you put the boy up in _this_ room? Death to good taste, I suppose."

Riku didn't like to think of himself as a very fashion conscious person…you generally only wore one mode of clothing with the Earthshakers: faded and durable…but he couldn't help thinking that the woman had no room to talk about good taste as she sauntered into the doorway.

She was tall, not as tall as Maleficent, but definitely bonier. However, where Maleficent seemed to enjoy shrinking into her black and purple wrappings like some insect in a cocoon, to better surprise people, this woman had the opposite line of thought: knock 'em out with forwardness.

She was clad in leather tights that would have made even Axel blush, a scarlet blouse with a low-rucked neckline and, over that, a waist-length duster lined with a fringe of dappled black and white fur that may even have been real.

Her shockingly red lips split into a grin when she saw Riku on the bed, "The Prodigal Prince, I see."

Riku sat up uneasily. True, he hadn't exactly been up here in a while, but he felt he could recall most of the people Maleficent had in her employ. Matter of fact, most of them were pretty hard to forget.

"What are _you_ staring at?" she cocked a penciled eyebrow, "Never seen a woman before? Have you told Jafar? That would be a bang-up defense, depending on your definition of _woman_."

She paced around the room, paying cursory attention to the dusty stuffed animals and the never-read picture books. Her dark hair was streaked with white, Riku noticed, though she wore so much makeup he had trouble judging how old she was…which was presumably the intended effect.

"Sorry," Riku apologized, getting to his feet, "I guess…you're my escort, then?"

" _That's_ a word!" she chuckled dryly, "Come, sweetie, don't look so paralyzed, I know you're not _that_ innocent, whatever else you may be innocent of. No, I'm your driver, sent to take you back to the chains from whence you came. Pretty shit plan of action if you ask me, but I never went to law school, so what do I know?"

"You have a better plan?" Riku asked.

"Clearly _you_ did, before Milady got her withered old claws into you. What, were you going to sail all the way to Cali-for-nye-ay on that sexy little motorcycle of yours, taking all adventures that come your way and never looking back?" she laughed again, "The old crone would have a stroke on the spot. She thinks you're God's gift, you know."

"Yeah...guess she does."

"Modest, are you?"

Riku hastily corrected himself, "No! I mean…she did a lot for me, growing up. I guess she just doesn't want me to get into trouble."

"So you regret going off west like some rebel hero?" she shook her head.

"If it means that much to you, I do. But not just because of Maleficent."

Sora being wrenched off of him, right in front of the pursuing car, Axel putting his neck out for no other reason than he felt bad, Kairi, lost in the ether somewhere, probably blaming him for everything that had happened to her and those she cared about.

Riku didn't need to think of decrepit, lonely Maleficent in her decrepit, lonely mansion to feel bad for trying to make a break for it.

"Bully for you," said the woman, "That old bag isn't worth pity. I don't think reptiles can cry anyway, so all your sympathy is wasted on her." She sighed rheumatically, bending down to stroke one of the stuffed animals, a white horse with a gray mane, threadbare and much attacked by moths from the look of it.

"I don't suppose you know the story behind your little bedroom, here?" She asked him, picking up the horse and turning it back and forth in slender hands.

"It's just an old ghost story," answered Riku at once, with an anxious look to the door behind her. You couldn't grow up in Destiny…hell, anywhere in Radiant, maybe…without hearing all manner of horror stories about the Hollow and the lonely old woman who called it home.

" _She's a witch,_ ", " _She's a murderer,_ " " _There's a whole bunch of dead kids buried under the house_ ", the usual stories exchanged among kids on Halloween, a veritable lexicon of contradictory tall tales. Riku had never taken part in them, however…it seemed inappropriate when the creepy old witch/murderer/child-eater was also the closest thing he had to a mother in the world. Besides, he'd had enough of a weird reputation as it was. No need having _that_ little nugget of his history get out.

"Don't we have to get going?" he asked the driver, who laughed again.

"No need to squirm so. Your estimable counsel is preparing pagan sacrifices for his briefcase, I believe we have some time to kill. Once upon a time, this fusty little corner of the house was originally meant for Milady Maleficent's little niece, her sister's daughter…"

Her eye lingered on Riku meaningfully. He'd heard something like this before.

"You sure we should be talking about this here?" he prompted, "Something tells me Milady won't take it too well if she hears the help gossiping about…"

"Milady values the Help's help too much to bother herself about old gossip, boy. Come now, I thought you motorcycle hoodlums would have more a sense of fun."

Still holding onto the stuffed horse, the driver sat herself down in a sagging floral-print armchair, crossing her legs as she continued her story, "Niece was set to inherit this whole place, the family fortune, estates, businesses and holdings, all that dry lot. Maleficent was just the placeholder, keeping an eye on things until the girl came of age. Resented her terribly, of course, which I s'pose you have to expect after being shafted in your Daddy's will."

"Maleficent's Dad left most of the estate to her sister," Riku recalled, remembering this part of the story and figuring he might as well let the driver make her point, if she had one, "Because she already had a family."

" _Bravo_. Insipid girl never did to a thing to Milady besides being born, but I think you and I both can agree that sometimes just being born is enough to cause a whole shitstorm of trouble, eh? Anyway, on Niece's sixteenth birthday she at last arrived here, at the house of her fathers, to see the kingdom that would one day be hers." She gestured grandly around at the room, "A bit less mold in those days, and the hedges were better taken care of, but not much else has changed."

"You were here back then?"

The driver snorted, "Like hell. How old do you think I am, boy?"

"Well…"

"Don't answer that. Point is, I was _alive_ , but still a girl with hopes and dreams and so forth. I wasn't inspired to sell out my career prospects until at least a decade later, so let's stop fixing on my extraordinary age, yes?"

"I wasn't fixing on…"

"Niece comes home for the big birthday celebration, and Milady Maleficent sets her up here, in this…very…room." She nodded, slowly, holding the stuffed horse up to her face as though to speak to it, "Milady spoiled her, she did. Fresh roses in every window, live music in the gardens, more levity and color than this sorry place has seen before or since. The night of the birthday party comes, and Niece retires to this…very…bed."

She stood up, putting a firm hand on Riku's shoulder as she guided him back to the four-poster, sitting beside him on it.

"You know what happened next?" she asked, almost too quiet for Riku to hear up close.

There seemed to be nothing left in the world besides her face, all white and gray and red, rimmed by that dark mane of hair. Riku felt trapped by her words, that soft little smile.

"She died," he said at last.

"Almost as if she'd been sleeping. And, oh, wasn't Milady's heart broken? Not even the return of her long-lost inheritance could keep Auntie's grief at bay." She frowned, "Or perhaps not. Do you know the moral of this story?"

Riku felt the faded rose-patterned coverlet beneath his hand, remembering a night he'd lied awake here for hours, tossing and turning, unable to shake the image of a silvery white girl standing in the window, staring at him, perhaps miffed that he'd stolen her bed.

 _Just a ghost story_ , he'd told himself a thousand times, and indeed it was. It didn't make it any less true, though.

"Don't trust more than you have to?" he suggested, not entirely willing, at the same time reminded of Axel and his trusting, easygoing nature. His cop friend Saix, who'd warned Riku against putting too much on the line for Axel's sake.

It wasn't the most original moral, Riku imagined. Even less so because you can't very well gauge just how much trust is necessary at any given time.

"Maybe. I was going to say 'everybody's in it for something'. Beware of excess generosity, boy. Anybody who says they're helping you out of the goodness of their heart is just playing you for a patsy."

"You're saying I'd be better off trusting people who admitted they're using me?"

"Not better off, perhaps, but at least they're honest." She smiled enigmatically.

Riku inched a little away from her down the bed, "Why are you telling me all this?"

"Why do you think?"

"I think you really want something from me, and you're pretty bad at being hiding it."

"Me? No, no, little boykin. There are all manner of things I want, but I don't need you to get them for me. You seem clever enough, though. It's always a shame when bright young men are led astray by bad influences."

She winked at him, as though she knew something. Riku was quite frankly getting sick of this little game. He had no idea who this woman was or where she got off dropping hints about the choices he made. He'd heard enough of the passive-aggressive riot act from Maleficent, he really didn't need another go around courtesy of her flashy, dubiously-aligned…

"Cruella," said a languid, perpetually irate voice, "Time is of the essence, and we can't afford to idle longer than we already have."

The man speaking was yet another tall and thin specimen, though outwardly not as bold as the driver…Cruella, whatever her name was. His hair had grayed since Riku had seen him last, myriad silver streaks interspersed through the gelled black mass.

He still wore the same type of suit: refined and incredibly expensive, tailored silk jacket, offset with leather shoes polished to a sheen, and a subtle red and black striped tie. He commanded gravity, however sleepy he may sound.

He looked at the two of them sitting on the bed and raised an eyebrow in question.

"Mr. Jafar," Riku said with stiff politeness, getting to his feet, more to break of the compromising position than for courtesy's sake, "hello."

"You'll have to forgive me, Jafar darling," quipped Cruella, standing as well, "All this talk about Maleficent's pride and joy and I simply couldn't resist stealing a moment to have him for myself," she put her arm around Riku's shoulder. His first instinct was to shake it off, but he figured that wouldn't go too well for either of them in front of Jafar.

"Curiosity has a way of seducing me from my good senses."

Jafar's nostrils flared, but he apparently didn't want to extend this discussion any more than it already was, "Try and keep your curiosity in check henceforth, then. We are behind schedule, and I don't much relish the idea of turning in a wanted man at the witching hour."

"Bad form, is it?" asked Cruella, "You'd think the cops would be pissing themselves to have their work done for them, but what do I know?"

"Answer that question on your own time," retorted Jafar, already starting out the door.

Cruella followed, her arm still a vice around Riku's shoulder, "A regular comedian, you are. My intestines are tying themselves up in knots of mirth."

Riku couldn't help but crack a smile at that, though he made to hide it before Cruella could notice. She seemed a little too fond of him for his taste, and Riku didn't want to be mistaken for encouraging her.

 _Axel would eat it up, though_ , he thought, _maybe he'd hate her from the second he saw her, but he'd like the attention._

As they started down the stairs, Riku raised his voice so Jafar could hear him, "Um…Mr. Jafar…"

"Counsel, boy," corrected Jafar without turning around, "So long as Maleficent retains me to defend you, I am your Counselor. Counsel Jafar."

This didn't seem like normal legal practice from what little Riku knew of the subject, but he supposed it was a bad idea to rankle his defense attorney.

"Counsel Jafar," he continued, "I was kind of wondering about our…um…"

"Gameplan?" suggested Cruella.

"Strategy. What exactly are we going to do when we get back to…"

" _You_ , boy, will sit still, appear contrite, and say nothing. The DPD is a festering stinkpot of mismanagement and corruption…"

"Sounds like our type of crowd," said Cruella, sotto voice.

Jafar evidently hadn't heard her, "…doubtless they'll want to throw the book at you just for trying to escape, regardless of whatever you may or may not have done to warrant being held. I understand they took you in on circumstantial evidence to begin with…"

"I think Sora testified."

"Testimony of a hot-blooded boy who only saw a specific event preceding the alleged crime in question. His testimony won't hold any water."

"Certainly not, since he's vanished off the face of the earth." Said Cruella.

"Be that as it may," Jafar stepped onto the black-and-cream carpet with a serpentine fluidity, "they treated you unprofessionally, basing their entire investigation on hearsay. Never mind that your escape was an effort performed by an outsider without your knowledge…"

"We don't have to bring _that_ into it, do we?" asked Riku, "I mean, I didn't _have_ to run off, it's not like Ax forced me to…"

"How delightful, the fraternal bond of hooliganry," sighed Cruella wistfully.

"I would leave that sympathy at the door, boy," Jafar cautioned, "whatever your friend's reasons for breaking you out of jail, the attempt was misguided and sloppy. That he has also vanished…"

"Makes him a convenient scapegoat, is that it?" said Riku, sharply enough to at last turn Jafar's head.

"I am not being retained to defend some nameless motorcycle thug."

" _Named_ motorcycle thugs are quite a different species," added Cruella, prompting a dirty look from Jafar.

"You are my priority, boy. It is _you_ I am attempting to defend, if only you would cooperate."

"What if I don't want to be defended?" Riku said the words before he quite knew he was saying them, but even as he did they made an odd kind of sense to him.

Maleficent wanted him to sit in that cell and wait this whole mess out while Sora and Kairi were missing, captive maybe, both on Riku's account, albeit to different degrees of severity. Axel could call _quid pro quo_ however much he liked, but he had gone above and beyond to help Riku, and now this lawyer Riku hadn't even asked for was willing to sell Ax down the river just to lighten Riku's sentence.

"I have a right to waive my defense, don't I?"

"You might, if only _you_ were the one footing the bill,"

Riku hadn't seen Maleficent standing in the door of the lounge, but there she was, standing stiffly and poised as a Classical sculpture, wrapped in the same shawls she'd worn this morning, though she had on a black day gown beneath them, perhaps to make herself more presentable for the company she'd summoned. Diablo sat on her shoulder, one yellow eye on Riku and the other on Maleficent herself.

She crossed the hall to them, looking only at Riku, that same paralyzing gaze that made the rest of the world vanish. He felt a lightness on his shoulder, and realized Cruella had unhanded him. Funny, he wouldn't have minded even _her_ touch at this point.

"As it stands, though," Maleficent continued, " _I_ am the one retaining Jafar to counsel you, just as I was the one who allowed you to bail out your friend. If anybody should be indignant about the way this whole thing turned out, Riku, shouldn't it be me?"

She smiled at him, her eyes going soft for just a moment, as she took his face in her hand, tilting his head up so he could look her in the eye. For an instant, a very brief, fleeting instant, her expression seemed almost grandmotherly, and also sad.

"If I could have it another way, I would," she said with a deep resignation, "But you come first, Riku. My own carelessness almost stole from me once, I shall not let it happen again. If you take anything away from what happened in that tunnel, let it be that."

Again, Riku remembered her words to him that morning, _A thousand children could be dragged off and imprisoned and starved, all before I let anybody hurt you_.

"Girls may vanish, and boys may be taken right from under my very nose, but _you_ , Riku, you are a man. Mine to cherish, mine to raise, and never to lose."

"Why?" Riku asked, and he may have stepped out from Maleficent's grip if her fingers weren't closed so firmly on her cheekbones.

"What a question." Her reply was flat, and her smile faded, "Perhaps not entirely unwarranted. I can never apologize completely for not being present through your life, not being there to watch you grow. I like to believe I have never taken things for granted, but I took _you_ for granted, old and silly and conceited as I was…as I am.

"You cannot be blamed for wondering why I am so invested in you, when I've taken such pains to be invisible to you up till now. That was to protect you, and it may have worked, up to a point. But no longer. If I am to come out of the shadows to ensure you are safe, then I will. But you must play your part as well."

She lingered there, looking into his eyes as though she wanted to say more, but Jafar cut in, "Maleficent, with all due respect…"

"Of course," Maleficent ripped her gaze from Riku with an abrupt speed, "You must be off at once." She let go of Riku's face, straightening up with her usual brusque efficiency, "Do as Jafar tells you, Riku, for your sake as much as mine. You will see more of me once you are back in the DPD's custody. I assure you, I won't leave you so alone again."

Riku thought that was supposed to reassure him, but he couldn't stop from thinking it as a threat. He'd never seen Maleficent outside the walls of the Hollow. Her element was this house; its shadows, its decay, its corners and niches. To imagine her leaving all that… Perhaps to appear at his apartment in Destiny, at the thrift shop on Clark and Kimbell, on the Overlook, where fresh wind blew off the lake and the whole place seemed wild and untrammeled, no matter how many bikes raked up the grass and stank up the air.

But all he brought himself to say to her was, "Of course, Ma'am…Maleficent. Thank you, for everything."

Because, in the end, she _had_ given him a life. There wouldn't be a Betty, an Axel, a Destiny High, even a Kairi or a Sora without Maleficent. He had to be grateful for that much, at least.

"We will talk more when I see you again," she told him, as Jafar shuffled Riku and Cruella out the door, "Until then…"

Cruella swung the door shut before Maleficent could finish, sighing exasperated in the fresh, cool air of the early evening.

"Had a whole speech, prepared, didn't she? Eyes only for you, darling, just think of it," she winked at Riku, fetching a keyring (accented with a black and white rabbit's foot charm, to match her hair), "Forget about poor Missy Chauffer, of course, I may as well have been invisible for all _she_ cared."

"Would that were true," replied Jafar flatly, "Quick, we're running out of time."

"As if _I_ was the one that stopped the whole damn show for an oratory performance?" Cruella clucked disdainfully as they crossed the uneven cobblestones of the Hollow's forecourt, "Why don't you go back inside and tell that to Milady? Or are you scared of her attack bird?"

Jafar said nothing to that, and Cruella just laughed lightly, "Never mind. Our chariot awaits."

And a chariot it was. Parked just outside the property gate was the snazziest car Riku had ever seen, and he usually made it a point not to call things 'snazzy'. A Duesenberg convertible, long and sleek, inexplicably new looking, plated in black and white with an inside that appeared to be upholstered entirely in red.

Cruella seemed to notice his interest, "Pretty as a peach, ain't she? Belonged to my brother, he drove it into a hardware store. He was beyond help, but the car was worth saving."

She unlocked it in the same fluid motion as she opened the passenger side door, "One of you gets shotgun, the other one keeps his hands off the throw rugs."

Riku didn't really intend to take the shotgun seat, but Jafar spent long enough staring at the shaky elastic fixings of the front seats that he supposed he would have to. The way the chair wobbled as he sat in it did little to boost his confidence, but it couldn't be any worse than riding a motorcycle in bad wind.

Jafar was left to squeeze himself into the narrow crevice formed by the backseat, where Cruella had indeed draped a series of animal-print rugs, all of which stank of mink oil.

"I was under the impression you were instructed to remove these," he remarked, picking at a zebra-pelt rug with an ill-disguised displeasure.

"Only when Milady M wants a ride, and she never does, so I haven't bothered," replied Cruella, sliding into the driver's seat and wasting no time turning the key in the ignition. The car trembled like some wild animal as the engine came to life. Riku managed to keep steady, but not without swaying somewhat unmanfully.

Cruella smirked at Riku again, "Not quite one of your Harley Roadster monstrosities, but I make do. Hold onto your man parts, boys, we _are_ on a schedule, after all."

Without further preamble, Cruella backed out of the drive and onto the road with such reckless abandon Riku thought they would come up against the property wall twice. Jafar, sitting in the back, seemed to have concerns of his own.

"Carefully, woman, carefully!" he scolded, long, bony fingers clenching around the shaky wooden armrests, "Need I remind you that it's _people_ in this car…"

"Well, there's so little personality, I must have forgotten." Cruella took one hand off the wheel as she spun the car to face south on the main road, which connected to the highway, "And mind the Freudian slips in future, Jafar. I thought those were _my_ job, anyway, Counsel?"

"There was no Freudian…" Jafar began, spluttering through clenched teeth, but he cut himself up, perhaps realizing that there _had_ been a slip, after all.

Things passed with comparative quiet for a little while after that. Cruella drove quickly, dipping just above the county speed limit and taking the many twists and hills in the roads with enough brazen boldness to make Riku's stomach turn. By the time they reached the county highway, bearing southeast for Destiny, Riku had begun to feel a sort of resignation.

Maybe there was nothing he could do but sit and take it. Go back to the DPD, turn himself in, say as little to incriminate Axel as possible, no matter how much Jafar pressed him. He wouldn't even have to lie, Axel had been clever enough to never tell him where he was going, so the whole perjury argument could then be safely chucked out a window.

As for Kairi and Sora…that would be more difficult. It was Riku's fault they were wherever they were now, he was certain of it. He still couldn't fathom where, exactly, they were, but it was becoming more and more clear to him that their disappearances were connected, and they were in the same place, because of him.

Cruella had again freed a hand from the wheel, this time to lower the window on her side of the car, letting in the sharp, cool wind of the road.

"Pretty night," she commented with a sidelong eye at the passing scenery." Restoring the one hand to the wheel she just as quickly removed the other to fetched a cigarette from a silver case in the glovebox. In the brief period when the compartment was open, Riku also chanced to glimpse a makeup kit, a few rolled up bills, a very abused-looking photograph of a litter of puppies and, tucked behind a packet of peppermints and an old pantyhose stocking, the silver plate barrel and leather grip of a tiny, delicate pistol.

Again, Cruella seemed to notice what he was noticing and winked at him imperiously as she fitted her cigarette to a long, ebony holder, the kind Riku hadn't seen outside of old movies.

"Got a light?" she asked him, clamping her teeth firmly around the end of the holder.

"A…what?"

"Don't play the innocent with me, darling. Kidnapper or no, if you tell me you've never had a smoke in your life I'll call you a rank liar."

"There will be no smoking in this car!" cried Jafar, leaning forward so his head reached between the two front seats, "The boy's being taken back into police custody, we want him to make a good impression. It'll look vile for us all if he smells like smoke."

"It's fine, Jafar… Counsel," Riku assured him, smiling despite himself, "I don't have my lighter anyway. It was…um…it was in my bike."

Considering that Jafar had, for all intents and purposes, broached the topic this time, Riku felt it would be undone to his old companion not to speak up for her now.

"You know, I've been wondering…"

"Have you?" said Jafar.

"My bike. Maleficent didn't say what happened to it, and…well…"

"Warms the heart, the bond between a boy and his hog," said Cruella, now filching under the driver's seat with one hand, maybe looking for a lighter of her own, "I had a similar relationship with my first car, before Daddy pawned it to pay off the alimony."

"From what we can figure," Jafar began tiredly, "your motorcycle was taken from that tunnel by the same people who would have taken you along with it. Pity about its absence, as that will no doubt launch a spiel of questions…"

"…which you'll answer for him, I'm sure," said Cruella, "Perhaps it was stolen by wayside brigands eager for an adrenaline kick."

"I'm afraid no amount of fancy cover stories can preserve us here. The police know full well there were two other cars in the tunnel at the time of the boys' disappearance."

 _This_ was news to Riku, "They do?"

"Something about closed circuit cameras. They saw the one car enter on the west end of the tunnel…"

"I hear poor Petey had the adventure of his life, the fat schmuck." Interjected Cruella.

"…and the other enter on the east end. Pete was able to disarm the security cameras after picking you up, however, so the police will have no record of what happened later. For all intents and purposes, you willingly came to see Maleficent at the Hollow, and she insisted you turn yourself back in, for your own good. Is that understood?"

"Yeah, sure, I get it, I'll play along," yet Riku wasn't near satisfied, "What about the other car? The Bentley, the one that took Sora?"

Jafar looked at him with mixed exhaustion and contempt, "As I recall, Maleficent instructed you not to meddle too deeply in _that_ aspect of all this, for all our sakes."

"Your sake, perhaps, Jafar, but I don't know about _his_ ," said Cruella, nonchalantly honking at a minivan about half a mile ahead, presumably for the sole purpose of intimidating it into switching lanes, "Not much he can do in the way of meddling if they've got him back behind bars," she winked at Riku again, "Unless you've got a whole army of leather jacketed cohorts to help you break out again, eh?"

"It's not like I'm planning on running off to _find_ them, or anything," said Riku, not really lying. After all, he _didn't_ have an army of cohorts to break him out again, so he couldn't really go off playing the vigilante anyway.

"These people were trying to kill me…"

"Capture you, darling. That car chase would've been heaps more dramatic if they were trying to kill."

"Whatever. They were after _me_ , and now an innocent man…"

"'Man' may be a relative term," said Cruella, not unkindly.

"…is gone in my place." Riku turned back to look at Jafar, trying to appear rigid and imposing, though he was conscious of how whiny this may sound, "Don't I at least get to know who they are?"

"No." said Jafar at once, in a tone that brokered no argument.

"Oh come now, darling," at first Riku thought Cruella was talking to Jafar, but she was pointing her unlit cigarette at him instead, "Can't you guess? The answer isn't half as mind-blowing as you think."

"Woman, what are you doing?" spat Jafar.

"I'm telling the boy to guess, Jafar, not giving him the answer. Short of lobotomizing him in my car I can't see how you mean to stop him _guessing_."

Jafar blustered some more, but he didn't take a scalpel to Riku's head, so Riku assumed he was allowed to think.

"It's the same people who took Kairi, right?"

"And all those other missing girls, to boot."

"You said you weren't going to _give_ him the answers!" Jafar leaned forward, rocking both the deriver's and passenger seats.

Cruella accelerated, more to throw the seats back in position than anything else, "I wasn't answering anything. _You_ did, though, having a meltdown on the spot. Spiffing work." She looked at Riku, "Jafar gets a little sore on that subject. All those nasty rumors about him and Wayward Woman No. 4, you know the Congressman's daughter…"

" _What?_ "

"Shame how children don't keep up with the news, these days."

"No, I know _who_ she was!"

She'd been the first 'name' among the missing women, where the others had all been working class, from families who couldn't really do much besides plead tearfully on the news for their daughters' return.

Riku looked at Jafar, both trying and not trying to imagine him in _flagrante_ with the girl from the missing person sheets, "Wasn't she, like, 19?"

"For the record, I got my training wheels off at 17," added Cruella.

"Those were disgusting, unfounded rumors!" insisted Jafar, fuming, "The girl was interning at my firm, boy, not that you have any right to…"

"Like something out of T.V, really," Cruella continued, "The girl got fed-up with the hanky panky and threatened to spill the beans. One week later, she gets in her car to go home and is ne'er seen again."

She pressed her cigarette against her lip in mock contemplation, "The _real_ kicker, of course, is that she had an interview with a reporter the very same afternoon, revealing all the juicy details…"

"That interview was fabricated!" said Jafar, "The ruddy reporter was just out to capitalize on a tragedy, off insidious rumors…"

"Rumors that get _your_ wind up, right enough. I was just filling the boy in on some of the backstory, as it were. It doesn't mean anything."

Yet she looked at Riku out of the corner of her eye, and Riku felt quite sure that it _did_. Maleficent told him that some business rival of hers wanted to abduct him because they knew how important he was to her, something like that.

Cruella was none-too-delicately implying that Jafar had some reason to have wanted one of these missing girls out of the way. Jafar was a close associate of Maleficent…

"You're saying these…business rivals want some kind of leverage against Maleficent?"

Cruella shrugged, "Well, they're certainly doing her no favors."

"Enough!" cried Jafar, "All this nonsense speculation is getting us nowhere."

"Wait," said Riku, "wouldn't it be a conflict of interest, or something, if you defend me? With your connection to the missing girl, and everything."

"Obviously not. Outside of certain peoples' conspiracy theories," he glared none too kindly at Cruella, who none too kindly flipped him the bird in the rearview mirror.

"There is no provable connection between your disappearance and those of these girls…"

"But the cops don't know that, do they?"

Riku wasn't sure why he was even pursuing this. Maybe it was his reticence to just turn himself in at the expense of everybody else. Maybe it was Cruella's insistence this whole thing went deeper than it appeared. It just didn't add up, though. That these rivals of Maleficent would want to use him to get to her, but would also eliminate someone very harmful to Jafar, somebody right in Maleficent's inner circle.

"And…well…wouldn't they jump at the chance to accuse you of not wanting the Congressman's daughter to be found? You know, in case she decided to…"

"Boy, regardless of how much you would like me to be disbarred and humiliated…"

"He said nothing about humiliation, darling," quipped Cruella, "Guilty conscience, much?"

"I have been charged with defending you, and as I recall you promised Maleficent to allow me to do so. By introducing gossip and irrelevant testimony, we'll do nothing for either of these cases. So I would let that self-righteous moralism down for the moment."

He addressed Cruella, "As for _you_ , stop filling the boy's head with nonsense. He doesn't benefit a whit from any of your so-called useful scraps, so give them up."

"Fine, fine, whatever you say, O Lord and Master." Cruella rolled her eyes, "I think the boy can figure it out himself, anyway, at this point. Between you, me, and the reanimated bag of bones we work for, we gave him more than he needs to put two and two together."

"You have?" asked Riku, but given the way Jafar was staring at him, it was probably best to sit still and shut up.

He _had_ been thinking, of course, about Maleficent's purported repertoire of associates. Whatever little personal experience he'd had of her over the years, he'd gotten more than his fair share of local gossip about the creepy old woman who lived in the big old house outside of town.

 _She's really a thousand years old; she eats kids; she sacrifices animals to the devil…_ And the less supernatural, _She's a mass murderer; there are bodies walled up inside her house; she's got her own personal army: gunmen, drivers, smugglers, mobsters…_

The gleam of a black Bentley went across Riku's mind, lit with flickering orange streaks from the lights of the tunnel. The resounding blasts of a gun, the smell of cordite in the air, Sora crying out behind him, as Betty skidded to one side of the road and Riku rolled over to the other.

A memory, more distant, of Axel in the park at dusk, trying with little success to carve a flame into the peeling bark of an old elm.

" _See those guys?_ " a lazy flick of his blade toward a distant black car meandering down the park road, " _Don't fuck with 'em. Styx and Stones. Even Seifer's got enough common sense not to pick a fight with them._ "

Earthshakers got to claim the roads, to hold their own rivalries with the other gangs, but it was an unspoken understanding among Radiant County's more criminal element (though Axel would insist, and Riku would usually agree, that the Earthshakers only counted as criminals about half the time) that the Styx and Stones called the shots. They weren't bikers, yet they had a claim stronger than a Harley and a switchblade could ever be.

Riku had been so young back then, looking back on it.

" _Destiny's got a_ mob _?_ "

" _Everywhere's got a mob_ ," Axel had shrugged flippantly, " _It's all in how good they are at hiding it._ "

He must have been silent for quite some time, because he heard Cruella's voice, as if from miles away, "Had a brainwave, eh, darling? Whoever said today's generation was slow?"

Riku turned to look at Jafar, aloof and smarmy in his rigidness, looking at him with a weary contempt, as if he knew Riku was onto something, and was anxious about what.

"It might be best if you kept the brainwaves to me for the time being, yes, boy?" he cocked an eyebrow.

"Yes, sir." Riku replied, surprised as how steely he sounded. Jafar actually leaned back a little, as though chastened.

Cruella, however, was otherwise preoccupied, peering into the rearview mirror and, for once, concentrating on the road instead of whichever way Jafar was squirming now.

"Well, isn't that a thing to see?" she whispered, stroking her cheek with her cigarette holder.

"What?" asked Riku and Jafar, almost in the same breath.

"We've got ourselves a secret admirer. Right lane, three cars back."

Riku turned back to glimpse what he could in the narrow view of the passenger side mirror. He couldn't see very much, true, but there was no mistaking the harsh, bluish-white glare of the headlights, the blank emptiness of the tinted windshield.

"It's been following us?" rasped Jafar, practically breathing down Riku's neck as he leaned over to glimpse the window, "How long?"

"Last half mile, I think."

"Why didn't you do anything about it?" Jafar demanded.

"What was I supposed to do, fly us out of harm's way?" sneered Cruella, "If I pulled any funny business they would know we were onto them."

" _They're following us!_ " Jafar repeated.

"I think we've established that, Counsel."

" _Do something!_ "

"Maybe we should," said Riku, feeling goosebumps creep up and down his arms, "You guys make out these guys aren't messing around, so…"

"Well, if the lad insists," without further ado, Cruella floored the accelerator, causing Riku to fall back painfully into his seat, while Jafar went sprawling in the back with a considerably undignified yelp.

Cars honked angrily at them as they shot by, bulleting down the twisty valley road. Riku checked the mirror to see where the Bentley was now, but it was on the opposite side of the highway from him, and he could only make out the barest glimpse of the hood.

"What are you doing?" asked Jafar, clinging desperately to his seat to steady himself.

"My job! I'm the driver, _I_ drive."

"They're coming into our lane!" Riku reminded her, noting the screech of tires and the angry protest of passing drivers as the sedan careened over to pursue them, right on their tail with no cares to stand between them.

"Easily fixed." Cruella wrenched the steering wheel sharply to the left, sending them swerving back into the left lane, onto the stretch of patchy grass separating the two roadways, and right onto the highway going back westward, though Cruella kept pressing on east.  
"Cruella, we're going the wrong way!" Riku reminded her.

"Exactly. They'd be mad to try chasing us now!" said Cruella, pressed against the steering wheel with a manic gleam in her eye, looking quite mad for all intents and purposes.

" _Truck_!" cried Jafar, jabbing his finger between the two of them in their sets to indicate the eighteen-wheeler barreling down on them, the unseen trucker honking panicked at them.

Riku had spent enough time driving around with Axel to know it was usually a bad idea to try and disrupt even the most reckless of drivers. After all, he may not even be in this situation if he'd heeded that advice earlier.

Still, there was a slight difference in size between a defunct parking meter and a truck.

He reached over to grab the wheel from Cruella, intending to take the car back into the eastbound highway, or at least onto the flat land between. Jafar, however, must have had a similar idea, because he reached over from the backseat, groping for the wheel as well.

"The hell are you doing?" Cruella demanded, unrelenting, "I'm trying to drive!"

It got to the point where all three of them were wrestling for control of the wheel. Riku imagined he may have been able to maneuver them to safety just in time, had Jafar and Cruella not happened to both pull the wheel left at once, sending them rocketing over into the next lane, though at least the danger wasn't as present here.

The truck honked again in the near distance, and Riku turned to see why. The Bentley had followed them over from the eastbound road, speeding just as recklessly as they were, right across the path of the truck, which swerved wildly to avoid it, eighteen wheels of cumbersome weight tilting dangerously over into the other highway as the Bentley came around into their lane.

It hit the pavement, stretching into both east and west highways with a tragically slow lilt.

"Oh shit…" Riku muttered, if not entirely out of sympathy for the faceless trucker than out of sheer panic for just how much of a mess they were making.

Cruella, however, wasn't apt to notice any of this, as she kept changing lanes to avoid oncoming cars, all of whom bleated at them as they approached. The Bentley was proving fairly good at keeping up with them, speeding up evenly as it changed lanes.

"They're gonna try coming up alongside us," Riku noted, having observed this trick all too often in bike races, "Maybe run us off the road."

"Well, she's already doing their work for them!" said Jafar.

"Oh, shut up!" Cruella nodded at Riku, "You, boy. Glovebox." She slammed her hand sharply against the padded leather of the glove compartment to accentuate her point.

Riku unlatched the box, a cascade of crumpled paper money and hard candies falling into his lap. He'd gathered enough information about the circumstances to know just what Cruella was after, however.

He reached into the compartment, feeling for the smooth, plate grip of the pistol, which he took out gingerly, looking at Cruella with appraisal.

"You ever use a gun before?" Cruella asked him, not even looking, "Of course you have."

He hadn't, really, but he stammered, "Uh…sure," almost by reflex, "But…"

"It's like swimming and sex, once you learn it, you never forget. How's your aim?"

"You can't mean to have him _shoot_ at them?" said Jafar from where he was wedged between the driver's seat and the back.

"Of course not, I want him to shoot us all so we can die with dignity. Dammit, _yes_ , I want him to shoot at them!" Cruella turned to Riku, at the same time wrenching the wheel so they were listing between the left-most lane of the highway, right where it met the narrow shoulder, "Aim for the tires. Useless to try and hit _them_ at this distance, and ten-to-one the windows are bulletproof anyway."

Riku checked the Bentley, still some ways behind them, its tires suddenly seeming as miniscule as dust motes, and just as implacable. The pistol, however ridiculously small and dainty it was, was an unwanted weight in his hand. There were initials carved into the barrel, he observed, a fine cursive _C.D.V_.

Biker gangs carried knives around all the time, and Riku had seen one or two shoot-outs in his time, he'd never deny that. But, on the whole, it was considered bad form for any one of the gangs to cart around firearms, that and they weren't exactly easy to come by. Earthshakers fought man-to-man, face-to-face, with whatever honor a no-good street thug could be expected to salvage.

And, morality and ethics aside, this thing looked barely capable of firing breath mints, much less bullets.

"I'm not sure about my aim," he told Cruella uncertainly, "Look, maybe we'd be better off if you tried holding them off. I could take the wheel."

"And let you make scrap metal out of my baby?" as the rear tires scraped frighteningly against the uneven gravel between the shoulder and the treeline, "Not a chance in blue hell."

"Nobody's shooting anybody!" insisted Jafar.

There was a muffled bang and a quick flare-up of sparks as the rearview mirror on Riku's side snapped off, falling by the wayside in a spray of glass and metal.

"Try telling _them_ that." Said Riku flatly, noting Cruella's roar of anguish at the vandalism. Resigned, he cranked the window down and stole a quick glance out at the Bentley, veering on the same narrow strip as they were. He couldn't see the gunman, so presumably he'd had the good sense to get safe and sound behind the apparently bulletproof windshield.

He might be able to steel a shot… Whoever was driving the Bentley was clearly better at keeping to a straight line than Cruella was, if only just. The front right tire was right there, and the valley road wasn't nearly as hilly here as it would be if they were closer to Destiny…

"Boy, you'll get us killed!" Jafar grabbed for Riku's arm just as he was prepared to pull the trigger.

"Jafar, you oily prat," screeched Cruella, "let the boy go! If he's a worse shot than you, I'll enter the convent."

The gun fired, but Riku wasn't sure whether it had been himself, Jafar, or the windowframe who actually pulled the trigger. A shot went wild, pinging off the side of the Bentley, which spun in a tight circle. An uproar rose up from other cars in the road, though Riku was by now too confused to figure out just what was going on.

"No nunnery for me, then." Decided Cruella, cutting back across four lanes of traffic to drive squarely between the east and westbound roads, "Good work, darling."

Riku nodded, not feeling any better. As he saw it, the Bentley would be on them again in a second, and they were running on borrowed time at the very best.

"This is terrible!" panted Jafar, slumped against the back of his seat, "What kind of fools are they to chase us? All those witnesses, they haven't a prayer of this going unnoticed…"

"Yes, I think the truck we tipped over shot _that_ plan in the fanny right away," muttered Cruella, "Oh, dammit and davenports, where the hell are we?"

"What do you mean, 'where are'…?" Riku began, but stopped when he realized they must have left the highway. Cruella had slowed down the car only a little, but it was clear from the lack of streetlights, the uneven paving of the asphalt, and the tall rock outcroppings on either side of the road that they had left more 'habitable' quarters behind.

"Must have taken an old service road," Cruella continued with a resigned sigh, collecting her cigarette holder from the floor and putting it back into her mouth without pause.

"We were on the highway! How did you go from there to a…"

"It's not a service road," said Riku, noticing the lonely silhouette of a water tower on the crest of a nearby hill, "This is the old coal refinery."

"Had your fair share of after dark revelry here, have you?" Cruella mused with a wry smile, "I must say, you're a few shades more fun than I expected…"

"No," Riku shook his head, rolling up the window against, just in case, "no, I mean…we never come up this way, not since I joined, at least. It's…"

Jafar's eyes widened, as if he realized too, "Into the lion's den, by God! Cruella, of all the places to go…"

"Oh, yes, because I had enough time to read street signs while keeping us from getting killed. Of course. _You_ could have helped, if you weren't pissing your pants all over my pelts."

Jafar threw the zebra pelt roughly aside, presumably for no other purpose than to scandalize her, "We must get out of here, immediately!"

"Oh, yes, we _must._ Let me just get my bearings," she chewed pensively on the tip of her cigarette holder, looking warily at Riku, "You absolutely sure you don't have a lighter?"

"Pretty sure."

"Christ. When _I_ was in school, _every goddamn_ boy carried a lighter. A lighter, a pocketknife, and a pack of mints in case a girl wanted to kiss you. Do boys still carry mints?"

"Er…no," Riku smiled without meaning to, thinking absentmindedly of _Good Vibrations_ and the stench of menthol and leather.

"Quite the conversationalist you are, eh? All the better, boys are better when they don't talk." She glared pointedly at Jafar in the rearview mirror.

Jafar wasn't amused, "We must be getting on."

"Ugh, please no more of this 'getting on' talk; I'm on edge enough as it is."

"That car will not have been the only car, you know that as well as I. The sooner we get Riku to the DPD the better off for us."

"Why? He'll be safe behind bars, but they can still come after _us_."

"They've no reason to want us. The boy is their quarry, and without the boy the rest of us are entirely..."

The windshield behind him blew inward in a hail of shattered glass, sending Jafar to his knees with yet another undignified yelp.

"Oh, no." breathed Riku, as the glare of another pair of headlights appeared at the base of the hill behind them.

"Good thing we didn't turn around," replied Cruella, already gunning the engine, "We'd have gone right into them."

They rocketed down the uneven refinery road, past dilapidated warehouses and long unused lorries and cranes. Here and there were more recent signs of activity: tracks, fresh litter, here or there a parked Bentley.

The lion's den, indeed. Or at least the backlot.

Another rapport of bullets sounded, accompanied by one or two taps of the shots grazing the bumper. Cruella grit her teeth at the noise, "Oh, those smarmy lizards are going to pay for the detailing. Every last ruddy one of them!"

"We can't just keep driving in a straight line!" Riku told her, lowering his head against the impending cascade of more shots.

"I can do a zigzag and a figure eight, if that helps. What else do you want me to do? It's pitch black out and there are old landfills everywhere in this cesspit."

Landfills...Riku had heard those stories too. Old cars, dented hubcaps, long-unused mining equipment...and rumors of worse things besides.

Riku nodded, lowering the window again almost without thinking it. A new determination was filling him, taking the forefront of his mind. Maybe Jafar was right, and he'd let Axel set him free, putting a noose around both their necks. His selfishness had gotten Sora taken, or killed, and he'd driven on from that without looking back either.

Kairi, again, " _The world isn't just you!_ "

She was right. No more running. Time to face it up, like the upstanding straight man Axel always made him out to be.

He fired another shot, just as the Bentley came up against an irregular hump in the road. It hit home, front tire on the left side. It burst with more of a hiss than a pop, steam and sparks flaring up into the misty funk of the night, the gunman's next shots going wild.

"What's he done?" asked Jafar woozily from the floor.

"Saved our skins, it looks like." said Cruella with approval, "Must we return him to the cops?"

But Riku wasn't done. A resolve had filled him, a single-mindedness that was not entirely unfamiliar to him, though never in a case like this. His mind seemed to have shrunk, the whole world dwindling down to just him, the pistol in his hand, and the handicapped Bentley swerving madly just to keep to the road.

He imagined the men inside...faceless, voiceless, yet he imagined them. Maybe they were some of the same men who'd been in the tunnel. The same ones who'd tried to run him down, who had taken Sora instead of him, Sora who had never done anything but fight to protect the girl he loved.

He remembered Sora's scream, and imagined those men feeling the same terror.

He pulled the trigger again, and again. One shot taking out the right headlight, the other pinging off the windshield, which dented...bulletproof as Cruella estimated it would be.

"Atta boy! Run the bastards off the road."

But Riku barely even heard Cruella, and he fired a fourth shot, hitting the rear right tire as the Bentley struggled to maintain a curve in the road, a fifth shot, rebounding off the hood.

One shot for Axel's goodbye, one for Kairi's accusations, one for Sora's scream. Riku felt, if not an intense gratification, at least a kind of strength.

The air was rent with the sound of shots yet again, but more rapid, chaotic, bullets spraying through the night, clattering against the sides of Cruella's precious Duesenberg. Riku felt a hand yanking him back inside, though he wasn't sure which one.

"Dammit, they've brought out the artillery!" Cruella cried, hunching down so low on the wheel she may have been sitting on the floor, "Who the hell brings automatics just to capture a kid?"

She looked at Riku, and for the first time Riku got the impression she was actually afraid, though whether it was of him or their heavily armed pursuers he didn't know.

It wasn't long before the machine gun took out one wheel on the Duesenberg, then another. The car entered a wild spiral, Cruella twisting the wheel this way and that just to keep them on the road.

"Woman, you'll get us killed!" shrieked Jafar, "Stop the car!"

"I don't stop the car! We go down together, or not at all!"

Which was the last thing Riku heard before they ran headfirst into the side of one of the warehouses.

The airbags deployed, such as they were. Big, cushy things that Cruella had clearly not replaced since she first acquired the car from her brother. Riku found himself wedged between the seat and the bag, his head throbbing.

Eons seemed to pass while he lay there, rubbing his head and struggling to push the airbag off him, though really it couldn't have been more than two minutes.

"Ugh...Cruella?" he turned to look at her, and found she was passed out, arms splayed out on either side of her airbag, as though she'd been shot square in the chest. She seemed alive, but unresponsive.

As for Jafar, Riku noted a faint moaning coming from the direction of the backseat.

Cruella must have driven them well off the road before they came to crash here, Riku noted. The actual pavement was a ways behind them, across a sparsely overgrown parking lot. The warehouse itself was long and low, with no windows, but a single door, limply hanging open in the uneven breeze of the night.

Before Riku could take in any more of their surroundings, or do anything more for his two incapacitated companions (or captors, whatever they may be), he heard a rush of footsteps and voices calling to each other, indistinct commands and curses.

The gunmen had abandoned their car, and they'd be here in a moment if Riku wasn't quick enough.

He wedged the passenger side door open, struggling against a faint soreness in his upper body. Cruella's pistol lay on the seat he'd just vacated, the engraved initials gleaming wickedly.

There would be about one shot left, Riku reflected. Not much, but something. He looked briefly at the unconscious woman in the driver's seat, feeling a brief flutter of regret.

 _Jafar said they only wanted me,_ Riku told himself, _They have no reason to hurt anyone else_.

But that was a hollow thing to think, and Riku felt like an idiot just for letting the thought cross his mind. The voices were getting closer, though, so he took the gun anyway.

"Running again," he whispered, stepping out of the broken down Duesenberg.

But not running away, Riku rationalized. Like Jafar had observed, they'd driven right into the lion's den. And if Kairi and Sora really had been taken by the same people who called this place home...

Axel would tell him to just keep running, to stop making everything his responsibility, think of himself for a change.

He remembered Kairi again, looking at him as though he'd just scalded her, _"The world isn't just you!"_

Riku was either the most selfish or the most saintly person in the world, apparently, by popular opinion. And, as much as he loved Axel, Riku didn't think he could reconcile not making this his problem, when he'd started it to begin with.

At a wild guess, he approached the partly open door in the side of the warehouse. Somebody had scrawled words into it, where a lock would normally go.

'ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER'. Fitting.

The voices were louder, and they'd be in sight of him soon enough. Riku supposed they would guess where he'd gone almost at once, unless they suspected he'd made off on foot like a sane person.

That couldn't be helped though.

With another sigh, Riku slipped through the door, and descended into the darkness beyond.

* * *

 **A/N:** And the plot thickens...just about everywhere. I really had a good time toying with the air of mystery in this chapter, particularly about the backstories of certain characters. Pay close attention to them, as not everybody remembers things the same way.

An incidental note that I figure is kind of important: the song Demyx keeps playing is Boney M's "Brown Girl in the Ring", a notorious Ear Worm from an era where all music was feel good music, even if it wasn't supposed to be. Listen to it at your own peril, as you may never be able to get it out of your head. ;)

Chapter 8 is set for this coming Friday, September 9. See you there!


	8. Abandon Hope, Ye Who Enter

Chapter 8, Abandon Hope, Ye Who Enter

 **A/N** : Now is probably a good time to mention these chapters will probably all be long from this point on. These Underworld-centric chapters particularly, but a _lot_ of stuff is going to happen down there, so I figured it makes sense.

Here's hoping you enjoy this little foray!

* * *

Sora had no way of knowing what time it was when the door to his cell opened, but considering Smee was carrying a tray of eggs and bacon, he supposed it was time for breakfast.

"Big day today, sonny," Smee told him, nodding in his usual vigorous manner as he did so, "Oh, yes, lots to do, lots of impressions to make, yes, indeed. Must keep your strength up."

It did _smell_ good, Sora conceded, as the tray was lowered onto the spindly table by his bed. The food was hot and steaming, the eggs looking like the kind fresh made over a campfire on a dark night in the wild.

His Mom had always insisted on eating breakfast, wondering how he could ever think to embark on a day of schoolwork and football practice without protein. Sora had never considered how true she was until now.

"What's happening today?" he asked, chewing on a piece of bacon like it was manna from heaven.

Smee looked at him as if Sora had just asked what planet this was (though he'd questioned that himself more than a few times since waking up in this place), chuckling, "Why, the Cap'n's fixing to set you up among the others right away today. Make you right at home down here, oh yes he will. You didn't think you'd be whiling away the hours with _me_ forever, did you?"

Considering Sora had half-expected the Captain to slice his throat open last night, yes, he had considered the possibility he'd never be allowed to leave Johnny Corkscrew's warm hospitality again.

"…oh. So, I'm being moved?"

The idea wasn't exactly more comforting than staying with Smee. Sora got the feeling the stammering doctor was one of the gentler personalities in this place, and no matter how much the Captain waxed on about how he'd spared Sora's life, he wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of being discharged into his care.

"You'll like it right enough, be around other lads, get used to the idea some. The Captain's sharp like that, yes he is, he knows a likely lad when he sees one, and he thinks you'll go far, yes, he does."

"Other lads." Sora repeated the words uneasily, thinking of the menacing caress of the Captain's hook hand, "What do they do? I mean…I still don't know what's going on here."

"Not many do, that's right enough, sonny. We know what we need to know down here in the Underworld, and we do what we're told to do, and we're fine and happy with that."

"Or else?"

Smee winked at him, "You get it, sonny, you get it. A clock can't run 'less all its bits and pieces are turning, so we turn, and the clock runs, and the time goes on, and nobody wants for anything. Finish up your brekkie now, lad, the Cap'n will be waiting."

So Sora finished his breakfast, the food not nearly as tasty as it had been before. His stomach was a roil of nerves, his mind swarming with images of the Captain, of his freshly stitched-up scar, and of wild imaginings of the Underworld that lay just outside the cell.

The Underworld…just another in a chain of urban legends that were trotted out every once in a while in school or at the park. Tidus and Sora used to lead expeditions to find the infamous hollowed out mines, but they never got as far as the hills just outside of Destiny before Selphie insisted they all turn back.

" _What, Selph?_ " Tidus would ask, laughing, " _Scared of ghosts and devils? Come on._ "

Kairi would come to Selphie's defense, eyes blazing, " _It's not ghosts and devils down there. It's people, and I think we_ should _be scared of them_."

They never told their parents about those little trips, and Sora was certain he'd be grounded to this day had his mother ever caught wind they were trying to find the secret underground fortress of Radiant County's most cutthroat and devious band of criminals.

Sora didn't think they'd realized at the time just what kind of people they were talking about. He'd always imagined some fanciful mix-up between pirates and suited mobsters right out of an old movie, hoarding their ill-gotten goods in twisty caves that stretched far beneath the earth.

Tiny windowless rooms, warm breakfasts, shiny sports cars that drive along soundlessly through the night…those things weren't scary for kids. They hadn't been scary for Sora either, until yesterday.

Smee uncuffed him after he finished breakfast, tossing his hoodie at him (Sora didn't like to think where they'd been keeping it, but judging by the smell it hadn't been with the laundry) and ushering him to his feet.

"Just a quick jaunt upstairs, that's all it is," Smee told him as Sora struggled to pull the hoodie back in over his head, the soreness in his side still slowing him somewhat.

"Upstairs? I thought we were underground."

"We are, sonny." Smee smiled at him, licking his lips again, "Upstairs is just less underground than this. Underworld can't have no bottom now, can it?"

"Well...I guess if you went deep enough you'd end up coming out the other side." Sora smiled halfway, but Smee blinked at him as if he didn't get it.

Smee unlocked the door to the cell and together they began to mount the steep steps that Sora had so nearly escaped by when he first woke up in this place.

"So…would we be in, like, the ninth circle?" asked Sora as they climbed the stairs, silently thanking Kairi for all her tireless assistance on his English midterms.

"Don't know nothin' 'bout circles, lad," replied Smee, "Our little room here is square, yes, like most rooms, I s'pose."

Well, there went _that_ attempt. Sora remained quiet the rest of the long climb up, until they emerged in a wide parlor, low and musty, lit with evenly spaced glass-shaded lamps. The furniture here was spare and uncomfortable looking: spindly end-tables and solid, unforgiving sofas and chairs. There was a stone fireplace at the end of the room, which seemed to have been boarded up for a while.

There were low archways and another staircase which presumably led to the other parts of the office, or hotel, or dungeon, whatever they used this place for. There were no windows looking out, and the only proper door was a solid wooden one directly opposite the fireplace. Somebody had painted an insignia on it: a red and yellow feather, crossed over a hook.

"Cool picture," Sora nodded over to the sigil, "Like a coat of arms, or something, right?"

Smee nodded again, "The Cap'n's got a taste for old times and elegance, sonny, I bet you figured that out."

"So that's what that was..." muttered Sora dubiously, but Smee thankfully did not seem to overhear him.

"A fine story 'bout them feathers and the hook, yesiree, but I wouldn't be askin' the Cap'n lest he mentions them first. Times he likes talkin' bout it, and times he doesn't. Changeable as the seas, yes, yes, sir."

He started mumbling some long ago story of his own time in the Navy as they meandered to a low reception desk across from the cellar stairs. He picked up a dull brass bell and rang it, producing a muffled tinkling sound, as though any actual music it could make had been surgically removed.

Sora had been expecting some burly associate, probably clad in the same over-expensive finery as the Captain, broad as a brickhouse and looking like he could break your spine into bits and eat them like potato chips.

Apparently, they did things differently down here, for everything.

The dusty bead curtain that covered the archway behind the desk was pulled aside, and a petite blond woman of indeterminate age emerged.

Sora didn't mean to gawp at her. He had seen pretty girls before, of course (Kairi would probably tell him she certainly hoped so), but this girl...woman, he couldn't tell just how old she was...was pretty enough to look entirely out of place in this dingy, dark prison.

She wrinkled up her tiny nose at Sora, perhaps noting him staring. The look of unbridled disgust somehow managed to also be pretty. She was proud, definitely, but Sora couldn't help but feel bad for her all the same.

 _Same thing Kairi went off on you for that night. Not everyone needs saving. Hell, she's one of them! Get a grip on yourself..._

"Hello, Tink," Smee greeted her with a smile, "I'm bringing our new lad up to see the Cap'n, if he's free."

Tink cocked an eyebrow, gesturing to the upstairs before heading off to climb them, indicating Sora and Smee follow.

"Tink don't talk much," Smee commented as they followed, "Don't fault her for it, we've all got our little crosses to bear, yes we do."

Tink seemed to overhear this, and turned to look at Smee with a vindictive fire in her eyes, her lips drawn into a tight line. She was still staring at Smee when she tapped three times on the lonely door at the top of the steps.

"Enter." Boomed the familiar slow voice.

Tink opened the door, stepping aside to let them in, angry eyes lingering on Smee who, again, seemed not to notice.

This room was more lived-in than the musty disrepair of the entry hall downstairs. There were writing desks and coffee tables everywhere, interposed with bookcases and globes.

A record player, the old kind with the brass trumpet affixed to it, sat between two bookshelves, playing strains of some European opera. A thin haze of smoke hung over the room, infused with the sweet, suppressive smell of expensive tobacco.

"I've brought the lad to see you, Cap'n," began Smee, peering through the mist to the figure slumped over the largest desk in the room.

"Whatever my other shortcomings, Smee, I do still have eyes," The Captain lounged in the wing-back leather armchair, his hair loose around his shoulder, greasy locks obscuring his face.

Sora noted he was smoking not one, but _two_ cigars, which he held in a brass holder affixed to the stump of his right arm. It was kind of silly looking, like a three pronged arm, yet in the limited light, there was something vaguely inhuman, almost insectoid, about it as well.

"Leave us, Smee."

"Oh, yes, Cap'n, yes, of course," Smee gave Sora one last pat on the shoulder, presumably for comfort, before scurrying out the door, which Tink closed behind them.

Without someone standing behind him, however creepy he may have been, Sora felt uncomfortably alone. He swayed back on forth on his feet, aware of the Captain's eyes on him, keen and hungry, the smoke from his twin cigars curling up to obscure his face. Yet, even so, his eyes glinted brightly as ever.

"Well?" he began, gesturing with his left hand toward the considerably less-cushy chair in front of the desk, "If a seat is present, boy, you take it. Respect is all well and good, but courage is just as important. And useful."

Sora nodded slowly, edging his way to the chair, which he sank into with a caution that even embarrassed himself.

 _Don't let him know you're scared. He's playing with you, he wants you to act brave, act brave._

His mind fixing on ways to be brave, Sora seized an opportunity and acted on it before the more sensible portion of him could wake up long enough to protest.

"Is that, like, a pipe, or something?" he indicated the cigar holder, which the Captain raised his eyebrow at, as though seeing it for the first time.

"Something like that. You find that once you have lost something you didn't think you can live without, you become very intent on enjoying all other things as best you can."

Sora couldn't fathom how enjoyable smoking two very pungent cigars at once could possibly be, but he nodded as if he understood.

The Captain chuckled, as if reading his mind, "You don't think so? Ah, well. We all have our vices, boy, isn't that so?" he leaned forward, " _Isn't it?_ "

"Um…yeah, that's right," Sora stammered, "We do."

"We…yes, all of us. It's good that you understand that, despite your youth. Unless you're just parroting what I'm saying, frightened of how I may react." He took a deep drag on his cigars, exhaling mightily.

"Well?" he prompted again, "Are you?"

"Am I…what?"

"Frightened, boy." He leaned over, looking Sora carefully up and down, "I know I've already asked, but one finds sometimes that the answer changes with some reflection."

Sora felt the words catch in his throat, the heady stench of the smoke making his eyes water, blinding him of his senses. This was a trap obviously, some sort of weird test of character. But for what? What the hell did these people want with him, and why the hell should they care how frightened he was?

He wasn't even supposed to be here. Just some mistaken captive taken down instead of Riku, now apparently forbidden to ever leave on account of a single accident of chance.

His throat began closing up, again, his eyes to burn, yet Sora was pretty sure the smoke had nothing to do with it.

 _Don't let him see,_ he told himself furiously, _dammit, don't give him the satisfaction. They can do what they want to you, play their stupid games, but don't let them win._

"No," he said, his voice sounding hoarse despite what he did to make it firm, "I'm not."

"Still no?" then, surprisingly, the Captain laughed, an uproarious baritone guffaw, the cigars trembling in their holders, "Stubborn as a mule, boy…"

"I have a name," he cut in, stubbornly as he could manage, "Sora. My name is Sora. If you're really gonna keep me down here for the rest of my life, you might as well use my name."

The Captain's smile slipped away from his face in an instant, though his eyes still gleamed with an odd sort of approval.

"Sora, then? The name your mother gave you." He took one guttering cigar from the holder and ground it out in an ashtray inset in a marble skull on the desk, "Not _your_ name."

"I don't have another. And you can't keep calling me 'boy'. If I'm going to be here forever, that's gonna get pretty weird pretty fast, right?"

"Perhaps. _My_ mother named me James," he ground the second cigar out in the ashtray as well, "But it was never _my_ name. My father's name, and he was nothing to me." He looked up at Sora, "Why wear the badge of a man who never did a thing for you? The legacy of a woman's broken heart. No. We are men, not decaying monuments."

The way he spoke, almost as though he _knew_ , somehow, about Sora's own father, his own mother, who never liked to speak about Dad, and what had happened to him, and how he'd left.

 _He's trying to get to you. Probably he's just making it all up, anyway. A sob story_.

But he could have no way of knowing about Sora's parents, could he? And he sounded genuine, still with the cloying formality he usually affected, but with less of an edge than he had previously employed.

"I gave up that name when I came here. If you''ll allow me a bit of poetic color..."

"What else is new?" Sora muttered without thinking, though the Captain didn't appear to hear him, or else didn't care.

"...All men, no matter how they descend into the Underworld, are recreated, baptized by the shadows and secrecy we so carefully cover this place in. It is here, we are able to reinvent ourselves, away from the prying eyes of those interlopers who would only take us as we appeared, those who would discard us. In the Underworld, those masks are stripped away, those shackles and those expectations. The Underworld is all that matters, what others made you is nothing, compared to what you make yourself."

Sora wasn't sure if he was supposed to respond to that, or if this was another of the Captain's flowery speeches, presumably meant to teach him some sort of lesson about the captivity he was supposed to be spending the rest of his life in.

This time, however, he felt he wanted to respond, whatever the Captain intended. He may never have been as brash and hot-headed as Tidus always joked, but he'd grown sick of this cloying condescension, of being talked down to by this slimy, reptilian lunatic who so desperately wanted Sora to get down and thank him for kidnapping him.

"Nobody made me anything," he told the Captain, "I made myself, nobody else did. And I like myself just fine the way I am, thanks."

The Captain cocked his eyebrow and chuckled drily yet again, beginning to unscrew the cigar holder from his stump. Sora wondered if he maybe oiled it, or something, as it didn't seem to squeak as often as it had when he put on his hook in the cell.

"Ah, so you are. If you are lucky, boy..." he smiled apologetically, " _Sora_ , you'll live long enough to regret that. It may seem noble to hold onto who you were, now, but believe me, such memories will only hold you back here, at best."

He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a polished cigar box with surprisingly little effort. Lazily, he unclasped the lid, revealing a row of curious implements lined up in slots of smooth black velvet. Sora spotted a pocketknife, a corkscrew (maybe that had been Smee's idea, he thought idly), something that looked like a thin-bladed razor and, in pride of place, the hook, clearly the Captain's most favorite prosthetic.

With his left hand, the Captain returned the cigar holder to its empty slot, and began screwing the hook into its place, speaking as he did so, "I have had many come before me in my time, Sora, men and boys both. Some are eager to escape their old lives, start again. Others are resistant. They cry injustice, they look forward to some imaginary escape." he looked at Sora out of the corner of his eye, "Pity young people don't study the Classics anymore. If they did, they'd know that nobody escapes the Underworld, however brave and daring."

"That's not true," said Sora, calling up an image of a hardcover picture book of Greek myths that his mother had often read to him (heavily edited for content, as he later learned) before he went to bed, "Hercules did it."

The Captain looked impressed, the kind of impressed a kindergarten teacher may give a precocious student, "Didn't he?"

"He did," insisted Sora, "he beat up Hades's dog, the three-headed dog." he nodded confidently, remembering how his mother, at his own insistence, reenact the 12 Labors with the aid of his stuffed animals. The memory may have embarrassed him, if it had come back at any other time. But here he was more comforting than anything else, a shield.

"Cerberus the hell hound, yes. Very good. Yet, as I recall, Hercules only left with permission of Hades himself. And even he may not have been so lucky, were it not for his wits and strength, and his willingness to bend the rules."

He moved his arm slowly back down to the desk, as if to test whether the hook was secure in its place, "You have a certain kind of pluck, don't you, Sora?"

"Pluck?"

"Courage, quick-thinking, impulse, skill," the Captain listed the qualities evenly, as if by rote, "I pegged you for a quick-thinker when you attempted your so gallant, yet thick-headed escape last night." his eyes flicked up to the reddish bump on Sora's head, where the door had made contact with him, "Perhaps not thick-headed enough, eh?"

Sora brought his hand up to feel the bump on his head, wincing at the slight pain the pressure caused, "You didn't expect me to just sit there, did you? I already knew I'd been...I'd been _kidnapped_ , and I didn't know what was going on, and the door was right there. Yeah, I tried getting out. Hercules would probably have ripped the door off, though."

"Perhaps he would have. Or he would have thought of something cleverer. Strength is one thing, courage is another, wits are a third. A man can be _capable_ with any of those three qualities, but if a man is to be _ideal_ he must have all three, as Hercules did. Still, by attempting escape, however, foolish it may have been, you passed a very important test."

Sora laughed bitterly, "A test? Yeah, you were _hoping_ I would get away. Of course."

"Of course. Bravery is one thing, even if it hasn't yet been tempered by sense. It is, at least, a start. Impressed as I may have been if you'd attempted a more creative type of escape, you at least attempted something. It was, indeed, the central incentive in my appeal to Hades... _our_ Hades, not Hercules's..."

"Yeah, guessed that," muttered Sora.

"...to keep you alive. The Underworld takes all kinds, but we have little use for cowards. This is not a place for indolence and fear, but for men of action, with hot blood running through their veins. Whatever else you may be, boy, regardless of whether you should be here or not, you are here now, and you have the makings to come far in the Underworld, if only you would allow yourself the chance."

"The chance to what? Forget about everybody else I ever knew, just so I can do what you tell me?" Sora got up from the chair, seized by a sudden bout of defiance, "Sorry, man, pretty crappy hard sell."

He turned to find the door, not even thinking about armed guards or the twisting labyrinth of tunnels that no doubt lay outside wherever this office was. Just of getting away from this nameless Captain and his sanctimonious speeches.

Yet, somehow, Sora couldn't find the door he'd come in by. The walls were all wood panels, unlike the lobby downstairs, interspersed with bookcases and cabinets. The door, he supposed, was built to look like one of them, yet he couldn't tell which.

"I would caution you against leaving so prematurely," said the Captain, his voice quiet and dangerously polite, "I pled mercy for you with the Lord of the Dead himself, extended you a personal olive branch so you may not die a needless death. I assure you, if you walk out now, you will not see mercy again. Remember the difference between courage and wits."

Sora sighed, turning around to face the Captain, his fists clenched at his sides, "Fine, if I have no choice. Finish the pitch."

The Captain nodded again, as if in thanks, "You're learning. Very good. You see, when I witnessed your brave little dash for freedom, I knew at once that I would be remiss not to go personally to Hades himself to secure your survival, and a place in my Coliseum."

"...Coliseum?" Sora sounded out the word, thinking immediately of the faded poster of the Roman ruin that hung in Mr. Thatch's classroom back at school, "You mean the fighting rings? I thought those were shut down, like, years ago?"

It had been a huge story, maybe almost a decade ago, and Sora had been a little too young to understand exactly what a fighting ring was. Still, it had been all over the news. An underground (literally, as well as figuratively) stadium, in which ne'er do wells of all walks of life paid to watch horses, dogs, people, fighting or racing or killing each other as the game called for it.

There were many stories about the Underworld, but the tales of the Coliseum had been the most prevalent, and maybe the most frightening, because so many of them had been proven true.

The Captain, however, only laughed at that, crossing his legs in his chair, "The Coliseum had its brief moment of exposure, yes, Sora. A short-lived crusade by the outside world, that part of the world that prefers to conduct its own more unsavory acts behind closed doors, rather than in public, where all can watch. But the Coliseum never died, I made sure of that.

"Many down here wanted it closed, believed it too risky to continue drawing attention to our humble home under the ground, but thankfully Hades was of the same mind as I. The Coliseum is the heart and soul of the Underworld, a symbol of what we have built here. And so it survives, whatever the outside world believes."

 _Which means there's no way he'll ever let me out of here now, not when he's told me that_.

Sora was beginning to understand many of the stereotypes he had held about organized crime were untrue, but he was pretty sure the denizens of the Underworld still didn't like a snitch.

"You want me to fight in the Coliseum?"

The Captain nodded, "As soon as possible. Imperfect though you are, you show as much promise as any other conscript your age, and more than some. You may find the games a challenge, most do at first, at least as a shock. Lord knows I did, and I was younger than you in my first tourney."

He ran his finger slowly along the length of his hook, his voice quiet and faraway. Sora was thinking of stories that had appeared in the news after the Coliseum fights had been exposed. Testimonials given by participants...stories of rigorous training regimens, feral animals, pictures of scars and deformities...

"Is that how you lost the hand?" asked Sora.

The hook went down into the wood surface of the desk, gauging a hole with a deafening thump. The Captain looked at him now, all traces of the gentleman negotiator gone now. Just a bestial, almost feral malice fixed entirely on Sora. For the first time, Sora felt he could believe this guy had spent decades fighting in that pit, had seen all sorts of horrible things, and done even worse.

"You may lose more than a hand in the games, boy," he snarled, "If you are lucky, you may lose less, but no man comes out of the Coliseum whole. Best not to believe otherwise, and work on those much needed wits. I promise you, that stubborn mouth of yours will only harm you here. Not all in the Underworld are as merciful as I. "

He got up from the chair, yanking his hook from the desk, sending wood chips flying. He advanced on Sora, who backed up, almost against one of the bookcases. Again, the hook was brought up under Sora's chin so the Captain could look him in the eye.

"You will enter the Coliseum, boy, and you will fight, and you will live as long as you can, however many parts of you are taken off," his hook moved down to Sora's dogtag, clinging it and tugging Sora's head forward, so his breath was choked in his throat, "You will win, or you will die, but you _will_ fight."

He yanked hard on the chain, which broke off under the pressure, causing Sora to fall to his hands and knees, coughing raggedly, feeling his neck burning.

He looked up to see the Captain standing over him, tall as a giant, the broken chain hanging limply off his hook, the dog tag waving back and forth forlornly, the Destiny High team insignia barely visible through the pained tears that were forming in his eyes.

"Have we reached an understanding?" the Captain asked.

Raggedly, Sora forced himself to nod, "Y-yes." It shocked him how small his voice sounded, how weak and scratchy. In that moment, a deep, burning hatred filled him, hatred of the Captain, of the Underworld, of this unjust captivity, this life sentence. But, seeing the Captain there, with his team tag hanging from his hook, so easily stolen from around his own neck, made Sora hate himself, more than he ever thought he could.

"Good." the Captain smiled again, taking the tag from around his hook to look at it with his usual disaffection.

Sora wasn't sure how long he lay there, tears flowing unbidden down his face, trying his best to hide his pain from the Captain, when another knock came to the door.

"Enter." the Captain said again, as he had when Sora had arrived.

The door opened, and Sora couldn't keep himself from looking up, just to see who it was this time, which new seemingly not-threatening threat had emerged from the cracks of this place.

Tink stood in the doorway again, looking at Sora with something very vaguely resembling pity in her eyes. Behind her was a man, maybe a little older than Sora, it was hard to tell. He dressed like a special forces soldier: dark pants, combat boots, a dark jacket; a red scarf was his only concession to ornament. His blond hair was unevenly cut, and his face was marred with scars, long and short, some almost faded, and others looking as fresh as though they'd been made yesterday.

"All ready here, Captain?" he spoke in a flat monotone, one which Sora could tell at once was intentional, and very well-practiced. He may as well have just walked in on a normal boardroom business meeting, rather than a hook-handed man standing threateningly over a sobbing teenage boy.

"We are, Strife," the Captain acknowledge the new arrivals with only the barest twitch of his head, "The boy has accepted the conditions. He is ready for the Coliseum." to Sora, he said, "Strife was your age when he came here, boy. Perhaps a little rough around the edges at first, but he is now one of my best, and Hades's go-to man. With any luck, he'll give you some perspective, or at least some discipline."

He returned to his desk, shoving the broken chain into the front pocket of his lavender waistcoat, looking for all the world as though he'd forgotten Sora was still there.

Sora tried to get up from his hands and knees, but the effort suddenly seemed too much. The pain in his side had returned, the newly stitched-up scar protesting again. Strife crossed over to where Sora lay, and extended a hand.

"Come on," he told him, not kindly, but not unkindly either, "On your feet."

Sora took his hand, and was almost pulled to his feet, though he felt surer of himself. Strife led him back outside the office, which Tink closed behind them, descending the stairs at rapid pace ahead of them.

They were quiet together as Sora followed Strife through the lobby and out the sturdy steel door into the next passage. Sora wasn't sure if this passed for a street in the Underworld, or if maybe this narrow tunnel, lit by flickering lights suspended from old steel beams, was part of the same complex as the Captain's office. There was noise of chatter and movement somewhere in the distance, but they passed nobody as they walked.

"You got a name?" Strife asked suddenly, not looking at Sora, though even this minimal conversation was surprisingly welcome.

"I'm Sora," his voice was soft and hoarse, as if he hadn't spoken in hours, "It's Strife, right?"

"Cloud. Strife's a last name."

"Last name. Huh." Sora paused, thinking of how best to say what he wanted to say next, "Thanks. For helping me get out of there."

Cloud nodded, "You were scared."

"W-what?" briefly, Sora thought of denying it, as he had the two times the Captain had asked him. But the strength for lying, for that stubborn bravery the Captain admired so much, seemed to have fled him.

"Yeah," he nodded, "Yeah, I'm scared."

"So was I, when I came down here."

Sora remembered what the Captain had said: that Cloud had been as old as Sora was now before he'd become Hades's 'go-to', whatever that meant.

"You really can't get out again, can you?" he asked quietly.

Silently, Cloud shook his head, face impassive. Sora looked at the scars, old and new, crisscrossing on his face. He tried to imagine where each one had come from, and how many scars Cloud had given in return, but that train of thought led nowhere good.

"How do you do it?" he asked faintly.

Cloud looked at him, as if for clarification. Sora sighed, "How did you get over the fear?"

"You don't get over it." explained Cloud matter-of-factly, "You can't survive without fear in this place. Fear keeps you awake. You just hide it. The Captain, Hades...they like to scare people, makes them feel powerful, more in control than they already are. Convince them they don't scare you, and they'll stop trying."

They were drawing closer to the end of the passage. Sora could make out a low stone archway, even darker than this place.

"Oh. Well...sorry, if this is a weird question, but...how do you hide it?"

He recalled his mother's own tacit suggestions that he was hiding his actual emotions, the same as Kairi's Gran, to keep others from worrying. Funny, Sora had never really thought of it that way before. He couldn't fathom how to actually _make_ himself do it.

He hadn't really expected Cloud to answer, but he did, "It's hard, at first, and it hurts. They'll keep reminding you that you can never go back again, that you'll never see your family, your friends. As if you didn't get it the first time." something vaguely approximating a smile crossed his face, "They'll make it a joke, a game. Try to break you with it. Makes it easier in the ring, if you're preoccupied. You get it."

Sora did. Something like a very intense equivalent of locker room taunts.

"So think of something, one thing, and keep in the back of your head. They'll try and destroy who you were before, they'll keep reminding you you can never go back. Pick that one thing from before, and fix on it. Just to remind you."

Sora nodded, wondering at how quickly Cloud had come up with that answer.

"Sort of like a goal, right? Something you have to get back too."

Cloud slowed in his soldierly pace for just a second, "No. There's no getting back. Believe me about that, for your own good. Remembering's enough."

He walked on toward the archway in a pointed silence, effectively putting an end to conversation. Sora followed him, thinking as he did about those reminders.

Kairi laughing with him on Selphie's porch swing; Tidus raising his glass at the party; Selphie and her implicit stream of well-meaning gossip; his mother, and her constant affection, her perpetual worry that had annoyed him so much.

 _Remembering may be enough for Cloud_ , Sora decided, passing under the archway, _But it's not enough for me._

* * *

Jane had by now completed the pattern of pacing in a circle, looking at her watch, and staring out the high warehouse windows to gauge the position of the sun about a dozen times, to no avail.

"Seven-thirty," she told herself, aware of the tremor in her voice, "Seven-thirty, seven-thirty, not a minute later."

It was a quarter to eight. Jane twisted her watch back and forth on her wrist, looking again at the tall doors that led back out into the front lot. Her ride would no doubt have left by now, sensibly enough. It wouldn't be good for any of them if too much attention was drawn to this little rendezvous.

 _If a rendezvous it is_ , she thought ruefully, coming to stop at a long-sealed supply case, pivoting back the way she'd come, and beginning the trek across the smooth concrete floor again.

"This was a bad idea," she said aloud, her voice echoing off the high ceiling, "You were mad to consider it. Really, too ambitious for your own good. Nothing was going to come out of it, anyway. Just a lot of trouble for nothing, a big inconvenience."

She looked at her watch again. Ten minutes to eight.

"Well, that tears it, then." she said decisively, "Nobody's coming." she looked up and down the warehouse, into the early morning sunlight wafting in through the gridded window frames.

" _Nobody's coming_." she repeated, a little louder, just in case somebody _was_ here, waiting to make the jump on her, or something.

Jane nodded, her course of action decided. Holding her canvas bag close to her side, she started toward the main doors, wondering exactly how far a walk it was back to Destiny from here, when an industrial roar echoed through the room, a rumbling grinding as of old generators suddenly being activated.

"Beezus!" cried Jane, turning around with a shocked start, her bag falling to the floor at her feet.

The noise was coming from behind a locked up service door in the back left corner of the warehouse bay. Jane imagined thick, sturdy iron chains groaning and pulling under the effort of hundreds of pounds, like the cranes her father's crew had once used to carry supplies on and off his boat.

Jane was on one knee at once, scrambling for her bag, and the various sundry articles that had fallen from it. Pens, paper, some old rolls of camera tape. These she returned to the bag with far less of her usual categorizing and cataloging. Her real quarry was the silver can of Mace that had begun to roll away down the floor.

She'd only used it once before, to fend off a mugger who'd assailed her when she was walking back from covering a car accident one late night. They'd all thought her a conquering hero in the newsroom the next day, but Jane suspected they'd mostly been humoring her.

Taking a few careful steps forward, Jane aimed the can at the door, whose lock was just now turning, her finger poised over the trigger, "Hello?" she called, glad that her voice didn't sound as petrified as she currently felt, "Who's there?"

The door began to swing inward, a figure emerging from the relative darkness beyond.

"Answer me!" demanded Jane, pressing on the trigger before she could stop herself.

A sad little spray of Mace spurted into the air, and dissolved.

The woman standing in the doorway made a little sound that was either a dry cough or a drier laugh, "You know, that stuff's not much good if you're standing seven feet from the target."

The woman stepped clear around the area Jane had sprayed, however, looking Jane up and down. Well, Jane supposed that's what she was doing, but she couldn't see her eyes under the aviator glasses she wore.

She was darkly complected, with a cascade of dark hair curling around shoulders Jane assumed would be shapely were they not hidden under a leather military jacket. Jane couldn't tell whether she was of Latin American or Middle Eastern descent, but she figured it would be impolite to ask.

"You're Phoebus's friend?" Jane asked uncertainly, "Esmeralda, isn't it?"

The woman looked up at her, lowering her sunglasses just enough so Jane could see a glint of bright green eyes, "You might have let me say my name first. I could just lie to you about who I am, especially now that you've let me know who you're expecting."

She said it frankly, like it was a plain fact. Something told Jane that she didn't really appreciate coming up here for her at all.

"Well..." she said tentatively, "If you can say who I am, that means you're exactly who I'm looking for. Yes?"

Esmeralda's face suggested the answer to that was 'no', but she answered anyway, "Jane Porter, DTV News, looking for the scoop of the century, is that it?"

"Oh, well, I don't know about the _century_ ," Jane laughed buoyantly, more relieved than she thought Esmeralda would appreciate that she'd gotten her name right.

She hadn't thought to wander into a trap here, but the fact that she hadn't been at the least somewhat concerned about the possibility made her feel quite silly in retrospect.

"But, yes, I'm looking for a _scoop_ , yes, a story. Phoebus spoke very highly of you."

"Did he?"

"Well, yes. You were a great help to him when he was on the Force, he said. Smuggled him right through the proverbial Gates of Hell." she smiled, sensing Esmeralda wasn't quite impressed.

"I did, a few times. Other cops too." her eyes narrowed, "Never reporters."

 _So that's it_ , Jane thought with some resentment, _She thinks I can't hold my own. That I'll just slow her down, or worse, jeopardize her safety._

People had far too many negative views of the press as it was, to start with, but forget it if you were a woman on a case. You were either a bloodless harridan or a useless glory hound.

"First time for everything, I suppose. I don't know if Phoebus told you, but I've never gone 'undercover' quite like this before."

"Oh, he made that very clear." Esmeralda looked up and down the warehouse, an air of impatience creeping into her manner, "Look, I don't want to mince words with you, here. This isn't exactly going to be easy. If anybody but Phoebus had asked, I'd have turned him down right away. But he vouched for you, said you were an honest reporter, good at your job."

"He did?" Jane quickly suppressed her surprise, reminding herself to thank her old contact for the praise, "Well, not to toot my own horn, but I like to think I do a fine job, myself."

"I hope you do. The Underworld isn't a place for questions, and everybody in charge is only in charge because they know how to spot sneaks and spies."

Jane opened her mouth to protest but Esmeralda cut her off, "Don't think you're a spy? Fine, you're not, but down there there's no difference between honest reporting of the news and spilling secrets to the enemy."

"I see. You don't need to worry; I can keep my head down, well enough. This story is too important for me to risk anything on it."

"This story..." Esmeralda repeated the words in a vague bemusement, "Yeah, I figure it's the talk of the town."

"District, actually. Quite a mystery, and the constant car chases really aren't helping to distract suspicion from...well, _your_ lot."

It had been chaos in the editing room last night, when word had broken about a second car chase, again involving the exact model of car the Styx and Stones used, terminating in a coal refinery known to be owned by Hades himself, for use in his 'legitimate' shipping concerns. Four different car accidents, seven hospitalizations, three victims in critical condition.

It had been chaos, but a fiery, purposeful, _newsy_ chaos. People may joke about reporters living for the sole sake of capitalizing off tragedies, but in reality Jane liked to think that she and her kin were filled, not with joy, when these sorts of things happened, but with a resolute purpose.

She'd gone to her editor right away after the news had broken, and asked...well, really, more like begged...his leave to be the sole investigative reporter on this case.

And he had refused her, almost without batting an eye.

" _Jane, honey, you're great and all, and I love ya for being you,_ " pause to crunch some cheese twists between his teeth, " _But this is a goddamn heavy story. We'll need all hands on deck, for this one. And forget about launching a profile, not with the DPD sniffing at the back door whenever somewhat farts._ "

Jane had suspected, briefly, that Ratcliffe had gone back on his word, and told Al about the tape recorder she'd used in their interview. Maybe he just didn't want _her_ to do a feature investigation, and was eager for any excuse to nip the idea in the bud.

That he had held a private meeting with a certain veteran feature reporter right afterward had only confirmed Jane's suspicions. She'd called Phoebus the moment she'd gotten home, not even thinking of what Al might say, or what might become of her career if this all went south. Just of the story, of the two missing boys, the terror and sadness etched into the face of Sora's mother, and the cruel smug aura that practically oozed from the likes of Al and Ratcliffe whenever they looked at her.

"I don't suppose so," said Esmeralda, apparently heedless of the memory train Jane had just taken, "If you think you'll be the one to get to the bottom of it, more power to you."

With that, she turned around and started toward the door she'd come out from. Jane followed, keeping at a safe distance behind. If she'd learned anything from the journalism business, it was how to tell when somebody was approachable, and when they weren't. You had to know how to behave around people, be they a witness, a professional, or especially a mole. This Esmeralda was clearly bent on being less forthcoming than moles already were.

Esmeralda opened the door and led Jane into a narrow concrete passage where the floor began to slant down, presumably into the foundation.

"Must have been quite a trick to clear this whole place out, just so we could meet," said Jane.

Esmeralda looked briefly over her shoulder, "Styx and Stones don't use this place much. It's a loading dock for supplies in and out of Elysian Fields."

"Elysian Fields, of course. Phoebus told me you practically run the place." she said it as a compliment, but Esmeralda still looked as though she thought Jane were playing her for a fool.

"I have certain privileges others don't, that's true." allowed Esmeralda, stopping before an enormous freight elevator at the end of the hall, "It's not easy earning peoples' trust down here." she pulled a lever in the wall, causing the elevator doors to groan open, with enough racket that Jane was sure they could be heard miles below ground.

"And I earned that trust by playing along when they needed me to. That's the most delicate part of this. You understand?"

Jane followed her into the elevator, noting the slight tremor in the floor as she stepped through the doors.

"Yes, of course. I promise you, I won't put your cover in any danger, at all. Just slip in, learn what I can, and slip out again, with many thanks to you."

"Let's scale back on the 'thank yous', okay?" Esmeralda pulled another lever, closing the doors and sealing them in the musty cage, "In the wrong ears, that counts as breaking my cover."

"Oh. Of course. Very well, no thank yous. _Public_ ones, at least."

Esmeralda nodded, going over to another switch in the corner, "You're not claustrophobic, right?"

"Me? Claustrophobic? Oh, no, no. I spent my whole childhood crawling in and out of Mesoamerican burial chambers, a few old mine shafts aren't going to scare... _oof_!"

Esmeralda pulled the lever, and the elevator began to descend with a furious speed Jane would not have believed possible of it. She was pitched across the small space, crashing into Esmeralda, who looked at her with irritation.

"It's not that bad, just grab onto something!"

 _Easy for you to say_ , Jane thought, looking at how steadfastly Esmeralda was holding onto the lever. She fell to her knees, holding her bag close to her chest, watching the thin cracks and pin-holes in the stone walls of the shaft as they descended, inhaled the steadily more powerful scent of the underground, like a subway platform or an old construction site.

She crawled over to the side of the elevator, to grab onto the metal rungs of the wall for balance and was treated to a winning view of the flat bottom of the shaft, which was rising up to meet them, like a Wicked Witch waiting to be crushed by some inane schoolgirl's farm house.

"My God, we'll splatter like rotten tomatoes!" she cried, just as Esmeralda pulled back on the lever, causing the elevator to suddenly stop in its descent, swinging lamely back and forth, at what Jane surmised could only be mere inches from the bottom.

Esmeralda let go of the lever, rubbing her hands off one her jeans, "Rotten tomatoes, eh? If you wanted, I could have had us go slowly all the way to the bottom, but there's a much better chance of us getting stuck halfway down."

She took off her aviator glasses, using her other hand to pick up Jane's bag, which she handed to her, "If you're serious about doing this, we'd better learn to trust each other. Yes?"

"...Yes. Of course." Jane panted, nodding as she staggered back to her feet, "I wasn't lying about not being claustrophobic, though. I'm not. Really."

"I hope not." Esmeralda turned yet another lever, and the wall Jane had just been grabbing on to opened out onto a new passage, " _That_ would make things ugly."

The underground corridor beyond was just what Jane had been expecting after hearing that the Underworld had been built in disused coal mines. The ceiling was low, but not debilitatingly, and she could see where the decaying wooden supports had been replaced by steel beams, to fend off the always-likely possibility of a cave-in.

The ground was uneven gravel, and some metal pylons remained to show there had once been tracks for mine cars.

"Come on," Esmeralda indicated a covered jeep parked a little ahead of them, "First shift starts in an hour, and I can't afford to be missing."

"Wow," Jane commented, climbing into the passenger seat as Esmeralda got behind the wheel, "This is yours?"

"My very own. Reward for years of service." Esmeralda turned the key in the ignition, and the jeep came to life with a beautiful purr.

"Reminds me of the rig my father used to drive us around in, up in the Andes."

The fresh wind off the mountains, and the glorious views of lush green valleys and pure blue rivers, sweeping in and out from behind clefts in the rock. Milo had gotten sick with the altitude, but afterward had told her he wouldn't have traded it for anything else.

"Your father was, what, an explorer?"

This personal question seemed quite out of left field. Not that Esmeralda had prohibited them, or anything, Jane just assumed with all her talk of keeping things private between them that she'd be against things like that, in case the people down here believed in even worse methods of torture than all the urban legends suggested.

"Oh, um, no; an archeologist. He _still_ is one, but he's tenured. A professor."

"Seen a bit of the world, then?" Esmeralda bent down to retrieve a dark green haversack from beneath her seat.

"I've been lucky there, yes. You know, in a funny way being a reporter isn't quite that different from being an archaeologist."

Esmeralda seemed to find that funny, or at least worthy of a rare smile, "Only archeologists cover the coldest cases they can find, is that it?"

"Well, yes, but my father understood, in the end. He'd wanted me to follow in his footsteps, and I convinced him I would be, in a way." Jane turned to Esmeralda, feeling assured enough to keep the conversation going, now that Esmeralda had started it, "What about you?"

" _What_ about me?"

"Oh, I meant...if your family was fine with you..." she trailed off, flushing, "Sorry, that's a silly question. Blame the reporter in me, I'm always asking rude questions."

"Well, try to curb that, will you? Elysian girls don't ask questions. It's better if they don't speak at all."

To Esmeralda's credit, she seemed no more sour than she'd already been about Jane's question, nonchalantly dropping the bag she'd retrieved into Jane's lap.

"Speaking of which," she continued, starting the jeep down the tunnel with a smooth and steady cadence, only occasionally jostling over an irregularity in the ground, "Probably better if you hide that accent. The less conspicuous you can make yourself, the better."

"Oh. Yes," she cleared her throat and said, in her best American, "Aye kin do Amurrican, no problim."

Esmeralda raised her eyebrows, either impressed or horrified, "Second thought, just stay quiet as often as you can. Open the bag."

"What's inside?"

Esmeralda exhaled sharply between pursed lips, "Things you'll need if you want to last more than five minutes in Elysium."

Getting the idea, Jane unzipped the bag, releasing a heady stench of camphor, a scent long remembered from her father's old steamer trunks. Inside the bag she found a rolled up frock: bright and colorful, patches of green and purple and red contrasting each other with their lurid patterns and lack of symmetry.

"My new uniform, I suppose?" Jane asked, lifting up a corner of the skirt to expose a pale, featureless face which lay beneath.

Despite herself, Jane gasped.

"Relax. Contrary to what you may have heard, we don't bleach the faces of our victims."

"Oh, I never believed that one for a second," Jane assured her, taking the mask out to hold up in front of her face, "Just a little eerie, seeing it just staring up at you like that."

"They have scarier masks in the Andes, don't they? Those screaming funeral masks that curse whoever wear them."

"I suppose," Jane turned the mask around, pressing it against her face just to test it out. Only the eyes and nostrils were allowed to be exposed, the cold rubbery interior pressing against her lips as if to smother her.

She'd once made a game of sketching the faces in the masks, idols and icons her father and his crew recovered at their digs. Milo would sit with her and watch, giving names to the different faces, and personalities as well. When she'd finished sketching, he would add speech bubbles, making little comic strips in which the perpetually angry relics explained why they were angry, usually accompanied by the painful puns only Milo could get away with.

"I've heard the Elysian girls get to paint their masks. Little designs and things like that. Uniqueness and anonymity all rolled up in one."

"If you want to paint the mask, do it on your own time. Just nothing _too_ unique, you don't want to blow everything because you've covered your face in rainbows and flowers."

"Rainbows and flowers," Jane tittered, "Stephanie Resnick has no need for rainbows and flowers, I'll have you know."

"Well, we're not talking about Stephanie Resnick," Esmeralda cocked an eyebrow as the jeep negotiating a very sudden twist in the tunnel, made even more so by the fact that the Styx and Stones clearly couldn't fork over the funds for road signs.

"Don't tell me there's more than one of you for me to worry about. At this point I should start charging a fee."

"Stephanie Resnick is me, and I am Stephanie Resnick," Jane beamed, putting aside the bag Jane had given her so she could access her own canvas bag, "I was wondering when you'd ask me about my alias."

"Funny thing about aliai…"

"Funny thing about aliai is that you say it 'aliases'."

Esmeralda frowned, "They're supposed to be innocent, unremarkable names. Stephanie Resnick sounds like she came from a drug store romance novel."

"I might say the same about 'Esmeralda', and you seem to have got along just fine anyway, haven't you?"

Jane wouldn't bother hiding that she was offended. She'd spent a good deal of time thinking up that alias. 'Stephanie' was a pleasant name, the sort that usually belonged to 'pretty' girls, the elusive and exclusive kind who hung about in the commons at school and laughed about all the other girls within earshot of the whole student body.

'Resnick' happened to be the street on which Jane's favorite college coffee house was located. She and Milo had studied many hours in that homey little place, fueled by coffee and sinfully sticky cinnamon buns.

"It's not just a name, either. I've come prepared," Jane took a neat manila envelope from her bag, opening it to remove the relevant typed documents…obtained courtesy of Phoebus himself, "Stephanie Resnick was born in Denver. Her father left when she was three, he was a gambler and a drunk. Her mother had to sell her body for sex just to put bread on the table. Mother Resnick was arrested for possession of heroin…"

"You got fake arrest records for her _mother_?"

"No, of course not. They're not going to ask, are they? It's _Stephanie_ they'll be doing a background check on, after all. Anyway," she barreled on before Esmeralda could interrupt her, "At the age of seventeen, Stephanie was forced to quit school and go on the road just to survive. Series of misfortunes occurred…complete with necessary arrest records," she winked at Esmeralda, "…and now she has presented herself at the Elysian Fields, hoping to find a steady place where she can earn a comparatively honest living."

To Jane's great surprise, Esmeralda laughed; a husky, musical sort of laugh, "You put a lot of thought into that, didn't you?"

"Well, of course I did. One doesn't plan to infiltrate an organized crime ring without making sure every inch has been covered. At least, _I_ don't."

"That's very admirable. Really, it is, I'm not just being sarcastic."

"What, have you been sarcastic this whole time up to now?"

Esmeralda deigned not to comment on that, "There was no need. The name, fine, they'll need to call you something. But the whole backstory, the records, all of that, it's immaterial."

"What...immaterial, what do you mean? Phoebus told me, he said the Styx and Stones do _extensive_ background checks on everybody who works for them, no matter who they are or what they do!"

"So they do. And who do you think they have doing those checks at Elysian Fields?" Esmeralda nodded, taking her dark red lip between her teeth with some relish, "Can't fault Phoebus for not knowing that, though. We were both a dozen or so rungs lower on the ladder back then."

She was quiet for a little while, the ghost of a smile still on her face. Jane thought of Phoebus: plain-spoken and reliable, one of the nicest policemen Jane had ever known, and certainly the most helpful, before and after his early retirement.

It was interesting, to imagine some distant past he'd shared with this tall, dark and gorgeous girl sitting next to her. Phoebus had definitely benefited from the work he'd done down here, work that wouldn't have been possible without Esmeralda's help, if the stories he told were true.

 _Yet he's safe and comfy up top, and she's still stuck here, playing double agent and mole for whoever pays the right price. Why?_

Jane wouldn't dare ask, though. Esmeralda seemed to be warming up to her, in her own way, and there was no sense in putting her whole job (never mind her own safety) on the line for the sake of some loose end that, even in reporting terms, was none of Jane's business at all.

"So…Stephanie Resnick doesn't matter, does she?"

"We'll call you 'Steffy'; less stuffy, more relatable. Clients may ask you your name..."

"I've heard clients may ask all sorts of things."

"...that they do. Don't worry, Steffy. You're well in your rights to refuse them if they ever step over the line."

"And they'll listen, will they?" Jane was no fool. She knew enough about the types of people that attended the so-called 'legitimate' front of the Styx and Stones. Regardless of any criminal backgrounds they may have, these people weren't exactly the type to take 'no' for an answer.

Jane bemoaned wasting even that small amount of Mace back in the warehouse, though it seemed she needn't have brought it at all. Steffy Resnick certainly wasn't going to put her new job on the line by pepper spraying the patrons.

"They'll listen, or else make the Powers That Be very angry. Let it never be said that we don't take care of our own in the Underworld."

"To a point, of course."

"Always." Esmeralda shrugged, "Now come on, get dressed. We're almost there, and we can't have anyone recognizing a local T.V news personality riding shotgun with me."

Jane looked again at the dress in the bag, then back at Esmeralda in the driver's seat, her face reddening, "Aren't you going to stop the car?"

"Why? We've barely enough time already."

"You're...you're sitting _right there_."

"Feel free to climb into the backseat, if you have to." she added, in a somewhat gentler voice, "Might want to get used to showing a little skin. Part and parcel with the job, and if you mean to last any length of time down here, you're gonna have to do what you can to fit the part. I'll avert my eyes best I can, scout's honor."

"You're a scout, are you?" Jane laughed dryly, holding the patchwork dress in front of her for scrutiny.

"No, but I'm not going to crash us into the wall just to get a glimpse of T and A."

" 'T and A'?"

Esmeralda rolled her eyes, "Steffy Resnick has to pick up on the buzzwords of the day. The typical Elysian girl knows two dozen words for the female anatomy and you won't find any of them in the Oxford Dick."

Jane figured out what 'T and A' was halfway through undressing herself, and wrinkled her nose in what she supposed was a very Victorian statement of disgust.

 _Stripping to the skin in some virtual stranger's car,_ she thought to herself, _I don't think Daddy would find this much like archeology at all._

Esmeralda did keep to her word, however, and didn't look Jane's way once as she changed out of her blouse and trousers, covering herself best she could with her coat, all the same.

 _If only the road weren't as bumpy, this may be half-bearable_ , she thought, pulling the patchwork frock over her head. The fabric was simple and thin, but comfortable enough. Still, it was cut more like a nightdress, sleeveless with a pleated skirt that came down just above her knees. The design was obviously intentional. Nobody wanted to have their drinks and poker chips served by dowdy matrons in cardigans, after all.

Jane shifted in her seat so as to straighten her skirt beneath her, shook her hair out so it fell more evenly around her shoulders, and placed the mask over her face, tucking the thin elastic band under her hair.

"Well?" she prompted, her voice muffled by the mask, "Is Steffy Resnick good to go?"

Esmeralda smiled tiredly, "Very sexy. Word of advice; try not to talk too much under the mask, accent or no accent. It gets messy."

The spittle on her lips testified to that fact, so Jane just nodded to show she understood.

"Here we are," said Esmeralda shortly, bringing the jeep to a smooth halt, "Welcome to Paradise, Resnick."

It didn't look very paradisiacal to Jane. Through the eye-holes in her mask, she could see they'd stopped in a sort of enclosure, separated from the previous tunnel by a concrete arch. A few other cars, mostly the signature Styx and Stones Bentleys, were parked here and there. She could see the steel doors of another freight elevator, and a set of steps going up to a storm door, practically covered with stenciled words.

"Underground parking complex," remarked Jane as they both emerged from the jeep into the stale air, "Hedonistic, indeed."

"Legit business is up top. Management makes do in the foundation." her eyes went to Jane's bag, which she had returned to its customary place, hanging from her shoulder, "You're bringing that with you?"

"Of course I am! I can't very well get anything done without my supplies."

"Supplies?" Esmeralda looked back and forth, as if to surmise whether anybody was spying on them, "What supplies?"

"If you wanted to complain about the bag, you could've done it before!" the words sounded ridiculously slurred under the mask, and Jane was really beginning to detest the spit. She hoped the Elysian Girls were allowed access to antiseptic wipes on the job.

Esmeralda didn't deign to respond directly to that, "A pencil, some paper, what the hell else do you need?"

"For a case like this, everything. Two missing boys, six missing girls, a thriving criminal empire right under our streets. I'm not sticking my neck out just jot down some notes!"

"Funny, I thought that was what reporters are _supposed_ to do."

"Well, they are..." Jane caught herself, "And I _do_ , it's just that this case requires a little more..."

Esmeralda hushed her, climbing the short flight of steps to the storm door. Swallowing her pride, and doing her damndest to untie that knot of anxiety was was again forming in her gut, Jane followed.

The stenciled words on the door read ' _Main Offices: AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED._ "

"Would I be right to assume they have a different view of prosecution down here?" asked Jane tremulously.

"A gold star for you," Esmeralda took a key ring from her pocket, though Jane wasn't sure just exactly _how_ , there must have been twenty keys hanging from it, of all shapes and sizes, "Remember to stay close, and keep your mouth shut, Steffy. Got it?"

"Clear as mud," quipped Jane with a forced cheeriness. Esmeralda tittered, selecting a big steel key, shiny from frequent use, which she turned in the lock.

Jane followed her through the doorway into a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor. It was quite clear that this was only a basement in a larger building, built 'up-top', as Esmeralda had told her, indeed as Jane already knew. The floor was unpainted cement, and the walls were painted in a glum eggshell white, grimy and stained with suspicious spots of all sizes, shapes and colors.

Doors lined the hallway: plain, white doors with numbers in brass nailed onto them. Some of them had placards affixed to them, as well, like office doors.

"Looks a lot like an editing room," whispered Jane, catching a distinctive whiff of mold, "Smells like one too,"

"Mouth shut, Steffy," Esmeralda started down the hallway, strutting more than anything else.

Along the way, Jane had a lookout for anybody who might be important. Other staff, mostly...she'd need to ingratiate herself with these other girls, or at least make sure she wasn't overtly suspicious. She had less hopes of finding possible leads on the many missing _this_ early in the game; best to properly establish her cover identity, first.

For the first time, it dawned on Jane that she may be down here for a while, and she hadn't told anybody where she was going. Al thought she was taking the weekend off sick, and she'd neglected to call her father at Christ Church.

 _Nothing to be done about it, now. Just keep your head down, get the job done, and you'll see them all again. That you will._

As they approached a bend in the corridor, Jane's nostrils were assaulted again, this time by a pungent aura of cheap cologne and tobacco smoke. Rather than keep out the worst of the stench, however, the mask seemed designed to limit her breathing as much as possible.

"They couldn't budget for air holes in these things, could they?" she asked Esmeralda, who stopped to shush her, staring with rapt stupefaction at a pair of doors, separated from the others in the hall by their brass fixtures.

Jane had time enough only to see the doorknob turning, beginning to open, before Esmeralda grabbed her arm in a vice grip, throwing open a skinny cupboard door with her free hand, "In!"

"In what?" Jane began, half-falling into the closet, the door closing so sharply behind her, it almost caught her hair.

On close examination, this closet was less a closet and more a supply room. Jane noticed stacks of crates, ungainly bundles wrapped in dirty tarp, and a broken roulette wheel, wedged between the wall, and a second door, which must lead into the room behind the grand doors.

 _A manager's stock cupboard, probably. Out of use, at the moment. Nifty hiding spot_.

Useful, perhaps, in more ways than one. There was a spy-hole in the door back into the halllway, just high enough for Jane to peek through on her tiptoes. She wondered if Esmeralda knew about that, intended Jane to get some measure of useful information, without appearing conspicuous.

In another corner, near the blocked door, Jane noticed a thick black cord...a telephone line, branching directly through the wall, into the blocked room.

 _Secretive they may be, but they've still go to make calls when they need to._ The Underworld needed some means to communicate to the outside world. Jane wouldn't be surprised if they were confined to only one phone per building, but this was Elysian Fields, the Styx and Stones' legitimate, 'above-ground' business. If they'd installed a separate landline in the foundation office, it could only be for the conducting of more nefarious calls.

An idea came into Jane's head at once, risky and dangerous, but brilliant. She reached into her bag and rifled past Steffy Resnick's folder, beneath her can of Mace and her case notes, to feel the cold, wound-up cord she'd carried around with her for years, but never had the chance to use.

"Wouldn't it be simply poetic if I ended up electrocuting myself?" she muttered, unwinding the cord to expose the thin metal pincers at the end.

She remembered Ratcliffe's scandalized rage when he'd discovered she was recording their interview.

 _What would happen if the Styx and Stones learn I've tapped their phone?_ Jane wondered, before deciding it was best not to think about that. She could only imagine what she may hear, relevant to the case of the missing teenagers or no. This room was clearly unfrequented enough that nobody need ever find the wiretap, and so long as Jane found a convenient enough place to hide _her_ listening equipment, there ought to be no trouble.

The first voices from the hall came to her ear, just as Jane was clipping the tap to the landline. A man's voice first: clipped and professional, but in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Our people will recover the boy, I assure you. In the meantime, you will be treated as guests."

"They were more honest in the old days," a woman, drawling but no less irate beneath her bored perfunction, "When they locked you up in an underground pit, they had the good grace to call it a _dungeon_."

"You will have all the comforts of Elysian Fields at your disposal..."

"Along with all the bugs and bites, I'll wager. I caught a look at some of those serving wenches on the way in. Feels like I've wandered into an Amnesty International ad."

Her work with the wires done, Jane removed her mask, the better to look through the peephole unobstructed, and got up on her tiptoes to see into the hall. Esmeralda was standing just a little ahead of the storeroom door, looking up at whoever was coming out of the office.

A third joined in: another man, thin and unctuous, somehow oddly familiar, "It baffles me that you expect us to sit quietly in waiting, while you look for the boy you were _trying_ to take from us in the first place."

"Mr. Jafar, I am surprised with you," rebuked the first man, "Surely you know better than to just throw these accusations about when there is no evidence to support them."

 _Mr. Jafar..._ Jane felt her blood go cold, _What in heaven is_ he _doing down here?_

"Evidence?" the woman was shouting, and Jane could almost see her advancing on the other man, "You need only look at the _baby_ your goons murdered if you want evidence! That car was an antique, worth more than _this_ pretty den of thieves will ever hope to see. Who did that, then, if not _your_ people?"

"My men report that you drove the car into one of our warehouses," the man's cool smile was plain from his voice, "Thankfully, they arrived in time to pull you and Mr. Jafar from the wreck, else who knows what would have happened?"

"You sniveling worm, do I _look_ like a reckless driver, to you? Dammit, I wanted no part in this, and now my whole livelihood is a ruin just because I fell in with the wrong sort of rich patsy!"

"Cruella!" Jafar reprimanded, "Cool your heels, woman. Remember where we are." he coughed, a dry little cough, very lawyerly of him, Jane thought, "Very well, Luxord. We'll play house guests for you for as long as this charade takes. Rest assured if any harm comes to that boy, my client will hear of it."

"I've no doubt she will," the second man, Luxord, replied, then addressing two others Jane supposed must have come from the office with them, "Lock, Barrel, take our guests to one of the Green Suites."

" _Extra_ mold, you say?" interjected Cruella loudly, only to be shushed by Jafar.

Jane pressed her face against the wall, hoping to see Jafar and his womanly associate be escorted past, but they must have been going the other way up the hall. The very fact that he was present here, however, given his connection to the missing Congressman's daughter...

 _And here you are to bear witness to it. It_ must _be fate, or else the Atlantean gods are real, after all. Wouldn't Milo be thrilled?_

"Don't you just hate high maintenance?" Luxord seemed to have noticed Esmeralda standing in the hall.

"I don't know," she grinned more brightly than Jane had seen her so far today, "I never liked being a hypocrite."

"You're too hard on yourself," At last, he stepped into Jane's line of sight. A handsome man, tall and sturdy in the shoulder, silvery blond hair trimmed close to his scalp, and a goatee that was obviously maintained with an unparalleled devotion. cut in artistic proportions. Something about his comportment reminded Jane of a politician: straight and soldierly, yet with an easy bearing and an inimitable charisma.

He put his hand on Esmeralda's shoulder. It was a humanizing sort of familiarity, and yet it was off-putting all the same. Jane wasn't sure if it only appeared that way because she was spying, but there was an undercurrent of menace to all this. The way Esmeralda laughed, looking back down the hall, as if sharing some great joke.

"What's their story?"

"The abridged version: they drove into a warehouse lot last night, caused a bit of trouble on the highway. They seem to think we've kidnapped the helpless orphan boy in their care." he smiled genially, yet coldly all the same, "You'd think Jafar would know me well enough by now to be sure I wouldn't lie about _not_ having the boy."

"You would have told him then?" Esmeralda rolled her eyes, "Of course you would have."

"Nothing to lose when there's nothing he can do about it," Luxord rolled his shoulders, "Alas, it is not to be. We'll have to put up with them for now."

"I'll see to it the girls treat them well."

"Not _too_ well. I'd rather they never want to come back," he consulted a monstrous silver wristwatch and frowned, "Morning's wearing on. I'd better head to the barracks, see how _il Capitan_ 's newest project is acclimating to life without the sun."

Jane bit back a gasp, and she could tell from the way Esmeralda tensed that she knew that was _quite_ a thing for Jane to be overhearing. Luckily, Luxord didn't seem to notice the slight change in her attitude, instead cupping her face in his hand, "What do you say to a drink tonight? I'd say we could both use one, this circus being what it is."

Esmeralda cocked her head, running her hand delicately down the lapels of his silk jacket, "I'll take you up on it. Let the inmates run the asylum for an hour or two."

"Atta girl," he kissed her on the forehead, strolling off down the hallway and out of sight.

Esmeralda stood there, watching him go with a faint smile on her face. Once his footsteps faded behind a closing door, the smile faded at once and she pressed a hand to her breast, sighing deeply.

She opened the closet door, so suddenly that Jane almost fell over into her.

"Oof!" gasped Jane, grabbing onto Esmeralda's shoulders for support, "Watch it, do you want me to brain myself?"

"Put your mask back on!"

Jane obliged, saying as she did so, "Care to explain what that was? Off the record, maybe."

"That was Luxord. He runs the casino"

"From the way he looks at you, I'd say he runs a few other things besides."

"Not the best time for sarcasm, Steffy," Esmeralda continued up the hall, her arms crossed firmly in front of her, like some Persian sculpture on a pedestal, "We're coworkers, he trusts me. If he didn't, believe me, I wouldn't be standing here talking to you."

"You must be very good at trusting. The way he looked at you, I thought he was going to melt."

"I could just as easily drive you back out of here, you know. Let's not start getting self-righteous."

"Well, I wasn't." Jane quickened her pace to keep close behind her, "Was that really Jafar? Rashid Jafar, the solicitor?"

"He's a lawyer."

"I know," Jane bit back her irritation, "It's him, then? Here?"

"Looks that way."

"And he and that woman are looking for a boy! An orphan boy. Sora isn't an orphan, I met his mother," she recalled her chat with Milo yesterday, and felt her heart skip a beat in her chest, "It's Riku!"

"Hush!"

Jane lowered her voice, though there was nobody else in the hallway, "It's him, though, isn't it? And they've lost him! And what was that talk about the Captain and the barracks, and all that?"

"I'll explain. Give me a second; you don't want anybody overhearing, do you?"

Esmeralda turned another bend in the corridor, into a low place lined with even shabbier doors than the ones they'd just walked past. She stopped in front of one door, three down from the end of the hall, where a boarded up hatch that may have been an old-fashioned laundry chute was built into the wall.

"You're rooming with Shock," Esmeralda explained, fitting a key to the lock and opening the door with a sonorous creak.

"There's a story behind that name, I'm sure," Jane followed Esmeralda into the tiny, cluttered room, observing the well-worn bunkbeds and the thick detritus of clothes and shoes that littered the floor here.

"What happened to the last roommate?" she asked.

"How do you know there was one?"

"Unless Shock takes a different bunk every night and wears two different sizes of Cha Cha heels for kicks…"

"She left. Probably best you didn't ask where."

Much as Jane wanted to know exactly what happened to Elysian girls when they left, she figured there was enough pressing information at present that that could wait.

There was a dirty hypodermic syringe on a dressing table. Jane tried not to think about that, as she turned back to Esmeralda.

"So Sora _is_ here! Why didn't you tell me right away?"

"When? When you were pepper-spraying me, tossing your cookies in the elevator, or telling me Steffy Resnick's life story? I was going to tell you, when we were alone. We're alone now, I'm telling you."

Esmeralda sighed, stepping gingerly around a tangle of halter tops, "The kid, Sora, he was brought in that night."

Jane opened her mouth but Esmeralda headed her off, "Before you ask: no, I didn't see a glimpse of him. He wasn't supposed to be taken..."

"I should think not," said Jane, "the poor boy meant to play a hero, running off after Riku on his motorbike."

"...instead of killing him, Hades handed him over to the Captain, for the Coliseum fights."

Jane frowned, "I thought the Coliseum had been shut down, ages ago..."

"That's _one_ cover-up that went over well, then. I've got no idea how long the kid's gonna last in those fighting pits, but it's a step up from being shot in the head."

Jane lifted her hand for silence, however, "You mean to say that the Coliseum _never_ closed down, and it's been running for all this time?"

"Yes, pretty sure I just said that."

"You've been informing on this place for longer even than that, according to Phoebus..." she paused, feeling an uncomfortable prickle on the back of her neck, "Does he know too?"

Esmeralda blinked, a neutral smile on her face, equal parts boredom and pity, which was all the answer Jane needed.

"Why didn't you ever _do_ anything about it?" she breathed, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off a cold that may have only been imaginary, "Phoebus was a police officer..."

"Key word is 'was'. One retired cop and one up-jumped tavern wench aren't gonna get much done all on their own. We do what we can to keep things from getting too bad down here, to keep all the lowlives and thugs from ripping each other to shreds, but Phoebus and I learned a long time ago that staging a revolution among the bottom feeders is just a pipe dream at best."

Jane removed her mask again, stepping tentatively over the mess that was her new accommodations, "So you just let it all happen? You sit and you watch, and you pick and choose what needs to be changed?"

Esmeralda chuckled dryly, "And you go where battle is thickest, heedless of any and all dangers, just so you can be the first to report back from the battlefield with all those juicy details. Spare me the wounded martyr act. We all do what we can."

She started for the door, pausing just short of it, "Unless you want to tell me you're down here purely for reasons of good conscience. You just want to rescue those boys, bring down this corrupt underworld organization, restore peace at last. Money and fame are no object. Yes?"

Jane traced the edge of her mask, thinking of Ratcliffe's sneers, Celeste's pleading eyes, Milo's put-upon insistence that Riku was innocent, and the cold fear in that girl Jasmine's big brown eyes when she spoke of everything Jafar had done to her and made her do.

"No," said Jane at last, "This is my job. I look for the truth, and if I get a bit of recognition from it, that's all very well. I did my job, at least. What about you?" she cocked her head.

"What about me?"

"How do you feel, when you watch them hold all those fighting matches, or you see them execute people for sport, or carry off children like slaves?" she was aware she had raised her voice, but at the moment she couldn't care less, "Do you still tell yourself you're helping the cause?"

All the light faded out of Esmeralda's face, "Yeah, I do, and I count myself lucky I'm still alive to do it. Watch yourself, Steffy."

She slipped out the door, closing it firmly behind her. Jane stood in place, fuming at the closed door for some time, a feeling sort of like regret beginning to form in her gut.

She was alone in the Underworld, so much to do, no idea where to start, and no friends to speak of.

With a forlorn determination, she put her mask back on, and began to wonder how she might decorate it.

"One must pass the time, somehow," she whispered, thinking of her father, and of Milo, and wanting to cry as much as she wanted to slap herself for crying.

* * *

Riku didn't dream at all that night in the meat freezer, and for that much he was duly grateful.

The cumbersome steel box had been lying, discarded, with a pile of other wreckage in a hallowed out barrow some distance from the warehouse he'd entered by. Riku could only assume this room was a disused dumping ground for the Styx and Stones' less-than-glamorous trash and, by now confident he'd taken enough twists and turns in the tunnels to evade any of the gunmen from the highway who may have pursued him, had marked it as a good enough place to snag an hour or two of rest.

Riku wasn't sure he really had slept even an hour, but by now he was restless enough to want to be on the move again. He'd come down here entirely of his own volition, it would be stupid to let himself be caught now.

The junk room was a veritable treasure trove of supplies, though. Using a flashlight he'd been thankful enough to discover near the meat freezer, Riku had located a cache of twenty dollar bills totaling two-hundred rolled up inside a dented footlocker.

 _Not really robbing if you're stealing it from criminals right?,_ he told himself, before realizing it was just the sort of thing Axel might say, and chuckling.

There were clothes too: jackets and trousers and shoes and shirts. Some were folded neatly, or pressed into those clear dry clean bags, and still others were stacked roughly in piled that went almost up to the storeroom's ceiling.

The idea of playing dress-up with the clothes of long-dead mobsters wasn't exactly appealing, but if the Styx and Stones were indeed looking for him, it made sense to do what he could to disguise himself.

He kept his jeans and combats, but trading his military jacket for a close-fitting black hoodie which would, if nothing else, at least help him blend in more. The hoodie was about half a size too small, and hugged Riku too closely in the midsection, but beggars can't be choosers, after all. At least it didn't smell as suspicious as most of the other sundries in this place.

Catching his reflection in a glint off a dented hubcap, Riku frowned, taking a strand of silver hair between two fingers.

 _Talk about red right hand..._ he mused. His hair had always been a point of pride, a rare concession of vanity. Not to the insane extent that people like Axel were always gelling and combing their own manes, but Riku had always believed the unusual color was something unique to him, and it looked damn impressive when riding down the open road.

Down here, however, with an entire criminal organization apparently hellbent on looking for him, it was nothing if not dangerous. Still, Riku wasn't too keen on grabbing up a pair of scissors and hacking away, so he settled for tying his hair back in a short ponytail, using some rubber bands he found in the drawer of a discarded Davenport.

This done, he retrieved a navy and black checked bandana from a bundle of similar (mercifully unused) ones, and covered his head.

The finished effect left him looking like a particularly pouty adolescent trying to look cool. Riku wasn't sure how serviceable this disguise was, or if he'd get away with fooling anybody for any length of time, but at least he tried.

 _Could always try exercising those tag skills again_ , he thought, tightening the knot on the bandana, _They can't catch you in a car, what chance do they have on foot?_

The truth of that statement was dubious at best and Riku knew that, but he felt better thinking it all the same.

He made another quick circuit of the room looking for anything he may use as a weapon, if the need required it. He still had Cruella's pistol, with its one remaining shot, but it didn't take a genius to realize that wasn't very much.

The Styx and Stones had the sense not to leave functioning firearms lying around in a storage room anyone could access, however, though Riku did find a sturdy, if worn, pocketknife with a leather grip at the bottom of a toolbox.

"Better than nothing," he told himself, remembering his own knife, lying at the DPD still, and the knife Axel had given him when he broke him out of jail. Presumably Maleficent or Jafar or Pete had taken it off him when he'd come to the Hollow. He hadn't thought to ask, convinced he wouldn't get a real answer anyway.

Prepared as he was ever going to be, Riku left the storeroom behind, and continued on down the steadily sloping tunnel. It would have to connect to the main mine shafts eventually, Riku knew, if the Styx and Stones had used that warehouse entrance as a supply channel. Eventually he'd be in the thick of the lion's den, the jaws of hell...whatever.

And when he got there?

He couldn't very well just go up to every smuggler, hit-man and cutpurse he met, wave a crude pencil sketch of Kairi and Sora, and ask if they'd seen these two precious faces.

He'd need to be careful, quiet, stealthy. He could do that. Of course he could. He'd been a street urchin long before he'd ever been an Earthshaker.

 _A pretty well-off street urchin, but the other kids on the block never needed to know that._

If Riku knew one thing, it was that he couldn't just turn around and leave this place. Well…he _could_ , but to do that, to just doom two innocent people to the fallout of the biggest fuck-up of his life, while he got off scot free…

There would be time to run away from his problems later. Smaller problems, maybe. Not this one. Not these people. Not in a place like this.

The inconstant rumble of a faulty motor brought Riku out of his funk at once. There was a wider, more trafficked-looking tunnel branching off from this one, running two ways.

Turning off his flashlight, Riku ducked against the rough rock wall, the best to remain unobserved as the approaching vehicle approached, passed, and went on.

It didn't pass, though, but came to a sharp, foul-smelling stop, clouds of tarry exhaust wafting over to Riku, making his eyes water and imploring, begging him to gag, though he resisted the impulse.

"Aw, dammit," grumbled a voice from the interminable haze, "Can't go a yard in this goddamned thing without…"

"I told you," a huskier voice, "We should've greased the tailpipe before we left the drop-off."

"I'll grease your tailpipe good and well, you keep up like that," the angry voice shot back, "But maybe you'd like that."

Another voice laughed, "Ooh, he's got you there, Doc!"

"I am _not_ walking all the way back to the bunkers!" a wheezy, lethargic voice.

"Stop your bitching!" the husky voice, Doc, spoke again, and Riku made out the outline of a stout, bearded man through the smoke, standing up in the low vehicle, "Look, we broke down right near the old junk heap. You could open a mechanic's with all the junk in there. If we need to replace the tailpipe, we'll replace the tailpipe and still be back before it gets dark."

"It's already dark!" someone hacked, apparently not quite so impervious to the fumes in the air as his companions.

"You wanna be smart, eh? Come with me. You're holding the flashlight."

Riku realized what was happening just in time, and dropped behind a waist-high outcrop in the rocks, just as plodding footsteps began to make their way toward him.

"I swear, if we don't find anything…" a flashlight flickered to life, and Riku saw a red-nosed, skinny man with a patchy beard, complaining to the still quite indistinct figure of Doc, who seemed to be adjusting a pair of reading glasses on his nose as he held a document (manual for his car?) up to his face.

"We'll find something, alright," Doc replied, "I know a guy, built himself a truck out of scraps from this place. I tell ya…"

The red-nosed man sneezed violently, and Doc snorted in contempt, muttering some vague profanity as they went further up the passage, and out of Riku's way.

Riku counted to ten in his head, waiting for some indication, some bright light, anything that might warn him it would be unsafe to proceed. Ten seconds passed. Nothing.

"So much for some private time tonight," grumbled the first speaker, in that same sour tone.

"We could play a game to pass the time!" the lighter, more jovial voice, "One of the fellas from the Boulder chapter, he taught me this clever little thing, like Bingo, but…"

A cacophonous snore cut him off. One of them had evidently gone to sleep.

"Oh, that's nice," complained the sour one, "now this one's gonna slobber all over the car. I never should've taken out that loan. Never!"

"On the bright side, it'll be paid off by the time you're seventy!" laughed the jovial one.

Judging only by sound, Riku imagined somebody got hit for that one. Not the happy one, apparently the grumpy one had missed.

This led to a four-way argument in which everybody spoke at once, a lot of punches were thrown, and Riku began to seriously doubt he would ever be able to leave this little hidey hole he'd ducked into.

Peeking just over the cusp of the rock, Riku finally got a good look at the car, which was lit very dimly from within by a faded dashboard light.

It was a very old all-terrain vehicle: big wheels, no roof, high windshield. Riku didn't know what kind of position you had to be in to be a runner for the mob and still need to take a loan out on your car, but he figured it wasn't a very enviable one. The thing looked primed to fall apart any second.

From what little he could make out of the four (or was it five?) men left in the car, none of them were keen on looking away from each other for any length of time and, with what little light they had, they'd have a difficult time seeing anything past their limited scope even if they wanted to.

Steeling his nerve, and taking a quick breath for fortitude, Riku clambered forward, on hands and knees, the rough gravel of the ground stinging on his exposed palms.

"Call me a bum, will ya?" the thick, syrupy voice of the one who had been sleeping sounded out just as Riku was about to clear the ATV entirely.

The resulting smack (though to whom it was directed Riku never knew) carried enough force to tip the ATV over to the left, just as Riku was passing it.

The ATV's rowdy occupants came to their senses long enough to weight the vehicle down on the left side, which may have been fortunate to them, though it sent two massive tires plummeting right toward Riku, who had no choice but to roll to the right with a sharp gasp.

"You nimrod, you'll get us all killed!" yelled the sour one, though the excitement seemed to have been enough to quiet the group down some.

The ATV was high enough off the ground for Riku to lie quiet comfortably beneath it, though the tires were so wide that Riku couldn't think how he could get out between them without being noticed.

Taking slow, measured breaths, Riku turned himself over onto his stomach, careful not to bump his head against the ATV's undercarriage.

The bumper looked high enough to crawl out from under, and there wasn't as much chance of him being spotted.

"Now, the object of the game…" the jolly one was saying.

"Jesus, can't you take a hint?"

"… _The object of the game_ is to get these four pips…"

Inch by inch, Riku moved forward, never taking his eyes off the bumper, and the opening beyond. Reaching out one hand, he grabbed onto the metal grille hanging off the bumper and began to ease himself out, into the open…

"…into a shape kinda like this, but you can't place a pip anywhere that ain't been called yet."

His legs now out entirely from under the ATV, Riku grabbed onto the grille with his other hand, and made to get out entirely.

"If you'll just move, so I can have a place to put the pips…"

"I'll show you where to put those pips!"

Another smack, a squeal, a clattering sound that must have been the pips, whatever those were, and the vehicle rocked again, not as dramatically as last time, but enough to nearly crush Riku's fingers, had he not reached up to grab onto the tailpipe, skinning the top of his left hand has he did so.

Hissing in pain, Riku regarding the raw, red mark on his hand, aware he had groaned as he climbed from under the ATV. Paralyzed with fear, he waited, breathless, watching blood trickle in slow, steady drops from the narrow scrapes on his hand, too afraid to let go of the tailpipe, lest he rock the ATV and draw notice to himself.

 _One…two…three…_

He began the count, trying to focus on the men's argument, gauge how likely it was that any of them would decide to look over the back of the ATV, to see him.

 _Four...five…six…_

His knuckles were white, the area immediately beneath them some sickly pinkish color. The pain would probably be nothing under normal circumstances, but now…

 _Seven…eight…nine…_

All seemed well. Maybe he was panicking for no reason. He was fine. No one knew he was here. He could get away yet.

... _Ten._

That was it, then. Letting out a quiet sigh of relief, Riku moved top let go of the tailpipe, just as the ATV rocked again, and suddenly a face was looking over the bumper, right down at him.

Riku almost cried out, but the air to do so seemed to have fled his lungs entirely.

The man seemed younger than the few Riku had already glimpsed up close, but not quite 'young'. It was hard to tell, though, as he was completely bald, and his face was both boyish and somewhat lined around the nose and mouth.

Riku looked up at him, thinking of moving, but finding himself unable to, pinned by those big, staring eyes.

The man smiled, a big and goofy smile, propping his head up on one arm.

Caught off guard, Riku managed an anxious smile back, waving feebly with his free hand…

"Dopey, quit your gawking and help me pick these blamed things out of my beard!"

Dopey looked over his shoulder at whichever of his colleagues had been speaking (at a guess, Riku assumed the sour one) and the looked back at Riku who, figuring something definitely out of sorts was going on, used his free hand to mime zipping his lips.

Dopey nodded, maybe too enthusiastically, as Riku made to straighten up, rocking the ATV as he leaned back from the bumper. Again forced to grasp hastily for purchase, Riku grabbed onto the tailpipe with both hands, coming face-to-face with the gaping opening to the pipe.

 _Jesus_ , was his first thought, retching, _This is when Axel makes a Partridge Family joke._

He'd had to dig his fair share of unpleasant things out of Betty's tailpipe (Riku was beginning to understand why Axel had picked that nickname) in his time, but never anything quite so unique as a dead bluebird.

Gritting his teeth, Riku reached into the pipe, got a grip on the bird, oddly and grossly warm from the heat of the engine, and tugged. It took a good two pulls, but Riku got it out, and the ATV's engine summarily roared back to life, causing something of a stir among its passengers.

"See, fellas," came the stuttering voice of the one Riku hadn't yet heard distinctly, "I told ya, I'd figure it out, I told ya! Just a little elbow grease."

"Out of the way, dammit," and sour one was apparently fighting his way back to his seat, "If you want a thank you kiss, start a call service."

"What about the others?" asked the jolly one.

"Well, they get to walk."

Without further ado, the ATV jolted forward down the tunnel, so much so that Riku almost lost his grip.

The grit of the road blew into his face, mixing with a hot, dry wind, and the sticky fumes from the newly cleared tailpipe.

 _Well, this is one way to get around_.

He didn't want to risk letting go at this point and, either way, he had risked too much on this little venture to bail out now. Forcing his eyes and mouth shut against the wind, Riku moved hand over hand back to the undercarriage.

 _Drag racing_ he thought, spitting ravel out of his mouth as he lifted his face to the undercarriage, using all his strength to keep from dropping back down, _Axel would be so jealous._

Seifer had hosted a few drag races, up at the Overlook. They'd been messy affairs, and there was never a day without somebody making an embarrassed call to the E.R. Axel had Riku had sat off to the sidelines, sharing chips from a bag.

" _We should totally sign up for the next one. Earthshakers eating earth! C'mon?_ " a playful punch on the shoulder.

" _Don't quit your day job_ ,"

" _Buzzkill_ ," but he'd been smiling all the same, the way only Axel could.

"Any of you fellas got the time?" asked the jolly one from above Riku, "You know how it gets at the Grotto. Get there a minute late and everyone's taken."

"You could benefit from a night of abstinence, you old pervert." Grumbled the sour one.

"And the girls would thank you for it!" chortled the stuttering one.

The Grotto…Riku knew the Underworld named sex workers as one of its many illegally traded commodities. You heard stories of huge underground brothels, where women (and men) of all shapes and sizes were kept to cater to every dark fantasy conceivable. And, considering the Underworld's clientele, that was no small matter.

The cops back at DPD seemed to be of the opinion that Kairi's kidnapping, whether Riku was responsible or not, involved the sex trade in some way.

 _Maybe all the missing girls are down there, locked in some dark room, having strangers look them up and down, count their teeth like they're horses up for sale._

Cruella had hinted that maybe, just maybe, Maleficent had some stake in these women going missing. Riku couldn't venture a guess at most of them, but it didn't take a genius to realize that Jafar's ex-intern could have destroyed his career if she'd stayed free, and Kairi…

 _Could Maleficent have known? She played dumb before, like she'd only just heard about her, about Sora, but maybe…_

"Christ, but she's busy tonight," observed sour one as the ATV ground to a halt.

"We oughta have played a round to decide who'd paid for tonight."

"Shut up," said several other voices at once.

Riku heard the side doors opening, and saw four different sets of worn work boots step out onto the gravel to either side of him.

"Watch the car, Dopey," said the thick-voiced one, who was apparently still cranky from his interrupted nap, "We don't want the old broad to have another fit on your account."

The four men started off, more or less in single file, singing some badly rhymed bawdy song that must have predated Maleficent.

Riku waited until the singing had faded out of earshot, craning his ears for any other nearby noises that could indicate people watching.

Just as Riku was easing himself off the undercarriage onto the ground, Dopey's head swung down over the bumper, to behold him, grinning toothily.

Riku smiled back at him, "Thanks. I appreciate it, really."

Dopey flashed him an upside down thumbs up.

"Are we alone?" Riku asked him. Dopey's response was to look left, then right, and then commence grinning.

"So...yes?" cottoning on to the fact that Dopey wasn't about to get more expressive than that, Riku crawled out from underneath the ATV, staggering to his feet,

They were in a narrow tunnel, apparently an offshoot of the main one they had driven down. Several other cars, trucks, and even a few rusty looking construction vehicles were parked in a haphazard cluster, going all the way down the tunnel to the main thoroughfare.

The passage ended in sort of a cul du sac: the gravel path terminating at a solid rock face, in which a very crude cave had been hollowed out, growing steadily narrower the deeper in it went.

Above the cave moth, a neon sign proclaimed this place to be, in overwrought magenta cursive: _The Grotto: Heaven's Most Beautiful Souls._

"Real classy joint, eh?" he turned back to Dopey, who was leaning over the side of the ATV, his head in his hands.

Taking the time to look more closely at himself, Riku saw he'd come out of that improvised road trip much the worse for wear. His jeans were torn in several places, he had skinned his arms as well as his hands, though in the rush of movement, he must not have noticed as much. Never mind that he was half gray with dust from the road, and his bandana was smothering him.

 _Not even the shadiest whorehouse would take a guy in looking like this_.

He could always try breaking in, but Riku didn't see any way of subtly infiltrating a 'building' with only one entrance and any number of drunk, lecherous mobsters in the way.

He took a few tentative steps closer to the entrance, hearing snatches of music and laughter from inside.

The sound of heavy boots crunching over gravel stopped Riku in his track. Instinctively, he dropped behind a dilapidated pick-up truck. Ingenious disguise or no, it would take a fair bit of explaining to convey why exactly he looked like he'd been eating the street for days.

Somebody was walking down the tunnel to the Grotto, taking slow, purposeful steps. Using the distorted reflection in the fender of the car opposite him, Riku made out a man, dressed in dark-wash jeans and a leather duster, sleeves rolled up past his elbows.

"Grotto's busy tonight," the man remarked, pausing next to the ATV.

Dopey looked vacantly at him, shrugging, and then nodding as if in agreement.

The man seemed to understand, and he nodded slowly, "Took a lot of nerve coming so close to this place. Watch yourself."

The words seemed like they were supposed to be threatening, but the man said them evenly, as though it was very reasoned advice. He took another few steps closer to the cave, and Riku was at last able to catch his face in the reflection.

Nondescript, mostly, with brown hair tied back in a short ponytail, and a smattering of odd piercings in his ears. Riku didn't really pay much attention to any of that, however, his attention zeroing right in on the scar along the side of his face…

 _Dammit, really?_

At the risk of sounding indulgent, Riku was starting to feel like he couldn't catch a break.

* * *

The Grotto grew slimmer and slimmer, lower and lower, the further in you went. Every two or three steps, the walls would seem to press closer to you, the red, blue and purple lights from the leaded glass fixtures inset in their sconces would seem harsher, more revealing, more smothering.

And yet, with every step you took in the Grotto, the harder it was to ignore the piano music, the smell of perfume, the loud chatter of dozens of happy, drunken voices.

Never mind that the walls eventually became so close together it would be impossible to turn around until you reached the other end anyway.

Still, Squall stopped himself halfway down the passage, if only to collect his thoughts.

 _You look the part, that's one thing. If you pull off the look, nobody's gonna bother to ask any questions, so long as you keep your head down._

He was good at keeping his head down. Apparently, it was his greatest asset, that and how intimidating he was.

In the Underworld, you didn't get very far without being both inconspicuous and intimidating. Only the head honchos in this place were allowed to keep a high profile; yet, at the same time, anyone who didn't affect _some_ aura of menace was just asking to be antagonized.

Squall didn't relish coming back here, and yet he couldn't deny a part of him had seemed to come to life again when he pulled on the old duster, clasped the polished steel lion's head pendant around his neck.

" _Leon the Lionheart_. _It's too perfect to pass up,_ "

He'd never been much of a romantic, but there'd been a certain appeal in the nickname, of only for a few short, unbelievable days.

 _Count yourself lucky. Some people don't even get a few days. Now man up, and move._

By the time he reached the end of the passage, there was barely a hair's breadth of space to either side of him, and Squall had to take slow breaths to avoid brushing up against the walls.

The door at the end of the cave was open, a watery red light spilling out onto the ground. Steeling himself for whatever was to come, Squall stepped through the door, and into the den of Heaven's Most Beautiful Souls.

There were paper lamps hanging from every conceivable perch in the room, lights both soft and harsh shining through patterns of different kinds, and in different colors, creating a disorienting effect.

Roman couches and shapeless armchairs were arranged without rhyme or reason, on plush carpets embroidered with wave patterns in green, blue and violet. Somewhere, behind one of the many beaded curtains that led off into other alcoves and niches in the cave-turned-pleasure house, somebody was playing a fine-tuned harpsichord, a bouncy, if not particularly sexy tune.

A spiral staircase stood, half-hidden, in the back of the room, occasionally swaying back and forth whenever a nearby patron moved. Still, the upper rooms must be even more crowded than here, given the noise from above.

Various patrons were sitting, standing, and lying down amongst these cushions. Some drinking, or sitting at tables to play cards or dice. Some enormous blob of a man sitting in a corner chair was smoking a hookah, its vaporous smoke hanging like a shroud over the entire room.

One woman, a shapely brunette with impossibly bouncy hair, caught Squall's eye from the unlit fireplace, and smirked invitingly. Squall averted his eyes, an expression of cold appraisal on his face.

 _You're a driver. You just got off a long run, and you want to have some fun for the night. You don't hate being here, you_ want _to be here._

So he traded the impassive face for a small, sly smile, nodding at the brunette as if to say 'maybe'. She rolled her eyes, drumming her fingers against the mantel.

Moving on, Squall moved carefully through the presses, not making direct eye contact with anyone. Not that he was concerned about meeting anyone he knew here, but it was bad etiquette for a thug to lock eyes with another thug unless he needed something. First rule in the book.

The noble proprietress of this establishment was sitting in a wing backed armchair, half-obscured by the smoke in the air, speaking into a burnished bronze seashell hanging from her neck.

"Send him up to the Zephyr room, poopsie," she was saying, "We've already got her waiting for him. Bottle of wine on the house, the usual."

A muffled response, too staticky for Squall; top make out from where he was standing, came from the shell. The woman nodded approvingly, and lowered it back to her bosom, lifting her eyes to Squall.

The shell around her neck wasn't the only one, he could see now. The woman was bedecked in more imitation Crustacea than a Santa Monica tourist trap. She wore shells hanging from her ears, in bangles on her wrists, rings on her fingers, threaded in intricate patterns through her black-and-white streaked curls.

"Hello, handsome," she smiled, her rogued lips operating to reveal a set of gleaming, white teeth that may as well been made of abalone as well, they were so freakishly shiny, "Your mama never told you it's rude to eavesdrop?"

"My apologies," Squall inclined his head, wondering whether or not it made sense for a Styx and Stones smuggler to say things like 'my apologies' for anything.

 _Oh, come on. You know more than most that the whole uneducated mobster cliché is just that. Besides, these people love flattery._

"I was just admiring that bauble around your neck," he indicated the necklace, which the woman turned over in her hand, chuckling.

"Nifty little thing," she said, "My own invention. In this line of work, a lady needs ears in every nook and cranny. See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil, that's all a fine policy on its own…" she chuckled again, "But a lady has to protect her girls up to a point, after all."

Squall nodded, understandingly. He knew very well about the Grotto's privacy policies; it's promises of utmost confidentiality…within reason. As could be expected, however, there weren't a lot of lines this establishment wasn't willing to cross.

Heaven's Most Beautiful Souls were a very special breed. Beautiful, quiet, compliant, and, though they may not appear so, as broken down as they were expensive.

"Grotto's famous," he continued, "Friend of mine out in Denver visited this place eight years back, and he still talks about this one girl who made him wish he'd never gotten married."

"Good to see we're doing our job," she purred, "Denver, you said? I was just thinking I've seen you before."

Her eyes seemed to linger for an extra second longer on Squall's scar. Briefly, he cursed himself for not indulging Yuffie's insistence that he cover it up with makeup. Still, smearing on a 'regenerating serum', whatever the hell that was, was only like to draw more attention to him than otherwise.

A lot of the Underworld's customer base had scars. Why should he be any different?

"Just passing through," he replied with a sly smile, crossing his arms over his chest, "They say a trip to Radiant isn't complete without a visit to Ursula's girls."

" _They_ are very right," Ursula laughed throatily, "See, that's what I love about this place! All the free publicity. Who says you can't run a business without paying for ads?"

She moved to her feet, her seashells clanking against each other with an almost musical rhythm. She moved very gracefully for a woman of her size, Squall had to give her that.

"Let's find _you_ eight years' worth of memories, what do you say?" she started across the lobby, parting the crowd without saying or doing anything. it must have been a function if the distinctive perfume she wore, a harsh, but clean sort of ocean scent, which cut through the heady smoke of incense in the air like a signal.

Squall followed her, taking measured strides so as to keep up without stepping on her trailing gown.

"So, handsome, pick your poison," she spoke over her shoulder at him, waving carelessly at certain of the girls lounging around the room, "Brunette, blond, redhead, flaxen-haired, tall, short, apple, pear, hourglass… God makes them in all kinds, and I just so happen to have the cream of every crop."

Squall followed her gaze around the room, trying to find a familiar face. He'd studied the available references for each of the missing women enough times to have them all committed to memory. If the sex trade lead was solid, it stood to reason he may recognize at least one.

 _Not Kairi, though. She's still too recently missing. They'd want to hide her away for a few extra days, just until things cool down._

"I've been told I have a weakness for redheads," he offered, anyway, if just to gauge a reaction.

"You're not the only john in this joint," Ursula beamed, "Everyone loves a red-head! Fiery locks, fiery spirit, or so they say."

"So they do.," muttered Squall, thinking of a cheeky green-eyed redhead with an ever running smart mouth and an inexplicable fascination with Squall's own origins….

"Ursula, you minx," called a new voice, as a figure vaulted over the narrow metal railing of the spiral staircase, "I tell ya, girl, you spoil me."

Squall froze in his tracks, nearly crashing into Ursula, had she not paused just in time to shake her head, laughing, at the brash young man who'd almost trampled her.

"I spoil all my customers equally," she looked over at Squall, as if to share some kind of joke, "You'll have to excuse me, honey, I have a pre-existing business arrangement to take care of."

The man met Squall's eyes for the first time, before Squall could look away.

Close-cropped blond hair, in something of an outgrown military buzz cut, a sharp, hawkish sort of nose…a roguish smirk so fixed on that face that it may well have been impossible for it to ever turn into anything else.

And, on his forehead, coming down over the bridge of his nose, dangerously close to his right eye, a scar.

It had been so many years, Leon had almost forgotten how well it mirrored his own.

He nodded at Ursula, muttering some vague remark of understanding, and made to walk off, feeling Seifer's eyes on him

"She can be yours in a week, if you're not in any hurry." Ursula was saying, her receding voice indicating that she was leading Seifer away, "Given it's you, I'm happy to waive some of the…stickier exit forms."

"Always lookin' out for me," Squall could almost see the cocksure grin, the finger lazily toying with the cross in his earlobe, "I figure I'm sticky enough, already."

He sounded preoccupied, though. Of course he was, now he'd seen him….

He eased his way through the crowd, trying his damnedest to keep his composure, remain calm, not give himself away, yet the entire time he couldn't stop thinking.

 _Why? Why him? Why here? It doesn't make any sense._

Or maybe it did, in some perverse, nasty way. Seifer, after all, had never been known for keeping his word, on anything.

A hand came to rest on his shoulder, startling him. It was the girl from before, the brunette with the impossible hips and the wary, catlike eyes.

She cocked an eyebrow at him, moving her hand slowly down the length of Squall's jacket, fingers pausing just over the silver belt buckle.

"I…sorry," he muttered, struggling for words, she looked over his shoulder, trying to find where Seifer and Ursula had melted into the crowd.

"Not…not right…"

The woman rolled her eyes, jerking her head in the direction of the exit, which Seifer was quite unsubtly making for.

"Oh," said Squall, "Right. Thanks."

The woman shook her head, sighing as she made some odd gesture with her fingers, which Squall could only take to me she'd gotten very much the wrong idea.

Nevertheless, Squall started off after Seifer, leaving the heavily-tinted, overtly-perfumed interior of the Grotto behind, pushing through the curtain to the narrow passage that led back to the entrance.

He spotted Seifer halfway down, when the walls were still close enough to either side to make it almost impossible to turn around.

In the more muted light, Squall found it somewhat easier to make Seifer out clearly. He still wore those baggy gray cargo pants, and that smoke-colored duster with the high black collar, like he was some dashing rogue from a Victorian romance novel.

The scarf around his neck was gray too, with navy blue tassels, only somewhat faded after all these years.

Before Squall knew what had come over him, he had grabbed Seifer by that scarf, yanking him back and pressing him against the opposite wall of the tunnel, the walls so close to both their backs that they may as well have been stuck there.

Seifer struggled, panting, his nose almost brushing against Squall's as he glared down at him, feeling a rage he hadn't thought to ever feel again burning up in his gut.

"Now, what's a nice guy like you doing in a nasty place like this, huh?" he asked him, his voice quiet, yet oddly magnified in the limited space of the tunnel.

"Get…off." Seifer struggled against him, his hand going for his belt.

Squall anticipated the reflex and got there first, drawing a closed switchblade from the pouch in Seifer's belt lining. There was a cross on the grip, inlaid in silver. Of course there was.

"Wasn't it you that told me only dipturds keep their knives in their belts?" he asked, flicking the blade open with a noiseless whish of air.

"You really wanna do that, Leon?" asked Seifer, grinning with an almost funny arrogance, though his eyes never left the knife in Squall's hand.

"You'd be surprised at all the things I want to do." He brought the point of the knife to the topmost tip of Seifer's scar, just beneath his hairline, "You know, sometimes that even scares me."

He began tracing the knife slowly, but slowly, down the length of the scar, "I lie awake at night sometimes, thinking of you, wondering just how much it would take to wipe that smug, shit-eating grin from your face."

He paused where the scar ended, inches away from Seifer's wide, beseeching eye, "Personally? I don't think it'll take all that much. You're all talk, after all." He moved the knife half an inch closer to the eye socket, "What do you think?"

"I…I think," Seifer spoke heavily, "I think you spend a helluva lot of time dreaming about me. I'm flattered."

Before Squall knew what was happening, Seifer had the point of another knife pressed underneath his chin.

"Second knife; back pants pocket,"

"Last place anybody would ever want to look," managed Squall, lowering his knife in concession.

"Ooh, lookit, Leon's grown himself a sense of humor," he leaned forward, pinning Squall against his side of the tunnel, "I'm speechless."

"What are you doing down here, Seifer?" the name sounded odd on Squall's tongue. He couldn't really remember the last time he'd ever spoken it out loud.

"Might ask you the same question. Last I checked, you were walking the thin blue line, same way you've always been." He raised his eyebrows, a soft chuckle escaping his thin lips, "Oh, I geddit! This is a _sting_ op! Undercover. Again. How original."

Squall tensed at the comment, looking up and down the tunnel, though for all intents and purposes thy seemed to be alone. The piano music from inside the Grotto was loud as ever; it may well be that nobody would hear anything, whatever happened between them here.

"Yeah? And what are you doing here, Seifer? Isn't this place a little rich for your blood?"

"I've been coming up in the world," Seifer brought the knife, almost lovingly, down the nape of Squall's neck, to loop through the silver chain, bringing the lion charm closer to inspection.

For the first time this evening, Seifer looked genuinely angry.

"And I've got a lot of friends," he pulled on the knife, tugging the chain taught around Squall's neck so he had to grab onto the stone wall to steady himself, "Real friends. _Loyal_ friends."

"Loyal friends?" Squall scoffed, much as the words chafed in his throat, "I don't know how you guys define 'loyalty' down here, but I'd call that a little optimistic."

"You never heard?" Seifer ran his tongue over his teeth, "There is honor among thieves. Not whatever the hell it is _your_ kind's got."

"Don't you tell me about loyalty," daringly, Squall gabbed for Seifer's arm with his free hand, letting the knife fall to the floor, and allowing the pendant to fall back against his collarbone.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Seifer laughed dryly, "All I have to do is scream a word, and I'll have every guy in that place at my back."

"And you'll be lying on the ground before they even get here. Bleeding from more holes than you ever learned how to count." Squall cocked his head to the side, "You probably don't know the word, but we call this a 'stalemate'."

Seifer paled, but the shadow of a smile never left his face. Squall took that as a victory.

"Now, we can settle this…peacefully," he continued, allowing himself to calm down, suddenly aware of how much his hand was shaking where it held Seifer's arm, "If you want to cooperate."

"So that's how it is? I snitch to the snitch?"

"No snitching. I'm looking for someone."

"Everyone's looking for someone." But the hesitation in Seifer's voice was a good enough cue to press on.

"Several someones. You know one of them pretty well, I think."

Seifer raised his eyebrows, clearly getting the picture.

"Riku's not stupid enough to come down here."

"Then what have you got to lose having a little chat with me?"

Seifer stood there, silently staring at Squall for what may well have been hours before he wrenched free of Squall's grip, "Fine. I'll chat."

He bent down to recollect is knife, but Squall beat him to it, "Don't be greedy," he closed the first knife, tossing it back to Seifer, "I hold the other one."

The implication was not lost on Seifer, who rolled his eyes, " _You_ don't trust me?" he scoffed, shaking his head, "That's hilarious."

"I'm not laughing." Squall nudged Seifer further down the passage, indicating the exit.

"What else is new?"

But Squall had only to click the knife in his hand open again to keep Seifer quiet which, somehow was the most gratifying thing that had happened so far tonight.

He might actually have laughed at the poetic justice of all this, but he wouldn't, if only to shut Seifer up.

* * *

 **A/N:** I may have mentioned in a previous chapter's note that the Underworld, and Elysian Fields and the Grotto especially, are very inspired by _Twin Peaks_ , in that I try to make them unsettlingly _weird_ places that are supposed to be 'fun' in a bawdy way, but register as more eerie and uncomfortable, with weird traditions/practices, etc.

Also, I'm sure a lot of you were just waiting for me to get over myself and include Cloud and Seifer after foreshadowing them for so long. They both have important arcs, and I hope to do them both justice.

That's it for now, then. Next update is for next Friday, September 16!


	9. A Little Night Music

Chapter 9, A Little Night Music

 **A/N:** So, in a bit of a reprieve, this chapter is actually less than 20,000 words! I decided that, at this point of the story, I would start shuffling through our three 'main' plot lines, the way a daytime soap might, focusing on its 'primary' story three days a week, and leaving two other days for its secondary ones...you know, at least until a sweeps month rolls around.

At this point, _Radiant Creatures_ has three primary story threads, which I've sorted by places. We have Sora and Riku in the Underworld drama, Axel's exploits hiding out in his hometown in Twilight, and what all those poor family and friends of our missing protagonists are getting up to in Destiny. This chapter discusses those last two...with a little musical theme.

Don't think of it as filler, though. Just like in soap operas, secondary stories only exist to become the main ones when the time comes for it.

Oh, also, POV 9 of the expected 11 is introduced here.

Enjoy!

* * *

"It'll be good for you," Aerith had told her, waving the bottle of dish soap as if to emphasize her point, "You can't just sit at home, worrying all night, it's not healthy."

The matter may have been allowed to rest there, had Cid not come into the kitchen that very moment, as though he'd rehearsed the entrance, and proceeded to loudly agree with everything Aerith said.

Pliant though Aerith may be, once the boss spoke up, any and all resistance became futile.

"It's Saturday night…" Celeste had tried protesting, "It'll be a madhouse."

"What better way to whip the new blood into shape/" Cid had smirked, scratching at his bow with an unlit cigarette, "Look, Cel, there ain't no good gonna come out of you sitting around at home and waiting for news. Just gonna drive yourself stir crazy. Get out, have fun, girl's night out or whatever you wanna call it."

Girl's night out… Funny, now Celeste came to think of it, she wasn't sure she'd ever really had one of those before.

The Dalman Club was one of the most exclusive spots in Traverse Township, and about the closest thing to real night life as could be found in the entire county.

It stood, tall and grand, in its own private square just off the main strip. High windows, marble columns on the patio, and a musical fountain in the forecourt only completed the image of out-of-place excess.

"You ever been here before?" asked Aerith, locking her car with a quick flick of her wrist.

"Here? Yes, if you count hiding under the awning to get out of the rain," she laughed lightly, adjusting the light navy blue fabric of her shawl on her shoulders.

Aerith must have noticed that, "You look perfect. Really."

The blue sleeveless cocktail dress Celeste had chosen tonight was about the only piece of formal wear she owned. There just hadn't been many reasons to get all 'dolled up' these past few years.

 _Past few decades, more like_. Then again, she hadn't really noticed.

Had her life really been all about her and Sora all these years? Well, maybe it had been. But wasn't that the whole _point_? Parents were supposed to give their all for their children. And when there's only one parent in the picture…

"Thanks," she turned to Aerith as they started across the forecourt to the entrance, "You look lovely, yourself."

Aerith inclined her head, a slight blush rising in her cheeks as she patted her French braid (twisted into a remarkable updo, wound through with her favorite azalea blossoms) into place, "I've got nobody to impress," she said lightly.

"Impressing yourself is a good enough start," Celeste started up the grand stairs to the entrance, where a queue was already forming to get in for the night, "You're beautiful."

Aerith blushed an even deeper shade of pink than the flowers in her hair. Clearly, she wasn't all too used to hearing that.

 _Not enough girls are._

Kairi had been the same way, to hear Amphitrite tell it. One of those girls who grew so used to expecting they looked average, ordinary and plain, entirely unremarkable.

But Sora, Celeste supposed, had helped her come out of that shell. Helped Kairi to see herself as somebody who was worth something, a person of value and not some nameless face in a crowd.

It was a marvelous feeling, that uplift, that renewed confidence. If only it could last forever. If only life could be so forgiving to the ones who did their best, tried their hardest, not to make waves.

"You girls trawling for your backstage passes?" Tiana came strutting around the side of the building, the dappled green and turquoise of her dress shining unnaturally under the front lights, though her dress was nowhere near as radiant as her smile.

"Congratulations, Tiana," Aerith pulled their fellow waitress into an embrace, "You're going to be amazing, I just know it."

"Well, if I choke up you girls are the only ones allowed to throw rotten tomatoes." Tiana looked over at Celeste and, smiling one of those bright, yet somehow _very_ conscientious smiles of hers, said, "Thank you, thank you, _thank_ _you_ so much for coming, Celeste. I promise, you'll love it."

"I'm sure I will,"

Tiana nodded, looping her arms through Aerith and Celeste's elbows and promptly starting down the patio toward a smaller, yet just as gilded door around the back corner of the club.

"Perks of being the new headliner's friends," she told them, "No more lines!"

"You sure you won't get into any trouble?" asked Celeste, feeling for the moment very 'Mommish' as Sora may have called it.

 _Why do these girls put up with you? You're about a decade over each of them and you act even older. It's not like you're 'fun' or anything._

Tiana waved her off, though, nudging open the backdoor with the toe of her burnished bronze-tone heels, "Nah. Odie, that's the manager, she _loves_ me. Thinks I have 'spunk', whatever that is."

"You're not thinking of ditching entirely?" asked Aerith lightly, "Leaving us to fend with Cid on our own?"

"Not likely," Tiana laughed, leading them down a narrow, dimly lit hallway past waiters and ushers, arms laden with supplies, "Old lady may love me, but love doesn't pay the rent just the same way as Ugly Ducklings.

"Still," she added, relinquishing her hold on Aerith just long enough to pull a black and white spotted curtain aside, "It's a touch more glamorous than washing dishes."

The main floor of the Dalman was clearly designed for dancing, in an older style that Celeste's own mother may well have approved of. Four tiers of tables, chairs and booths (with a bar on each tier, so points for practicality) rose up in a semi-circle from a polished wood dance floor, which faced a slimmer semicircular stage.

There was already a small jazz band up on the stage: a pianist, a cellist, two saxophonists, and a drummer, playing smooth music as the evening's guests began filing in from the outer foyer to be escorted to their seats.

"Come on, you guys are up here," Tiana started up the carpeted stairs to the second tier up from the dance floor, moving down to a table in about the center, with two places set.

"You spoil us," smiled Celeste, taking off her shawl to drape across the chair.

"You deserve to be spoiled," Tiana was clearly struggling mightily to make her point known, at the same time avoiding actually _saying_ that point aloud, presumably for fear of upsetting her.

Shaking her hair out as if for luck, Tiana gave them one last grin as she started back to the stairs, "I better get backstage. Last minute warmups, you know how it is."

"Break a leg!" called Aerith, waving her off.

"Don't you even!" but Tiana was laughing, musically enough in her own way.

Alone now, Celeste shifted in her seat, looking uncertainly at the basket of bread on the table. Having worked in this business for more years than she ever had hoped to count, Celeste had developed a pity enough for fellow waiters and waitresses to resist the impulse to go after the assorted dry slices in the basket.

"Thanks," she told Aerith, after a suitable enough pause, "for convincing me to come tonight.'

"You're having a good time?" Aerith cocked an eyebrow, adjusting her flowers yet again, "We only just got here."

"Oh, well…it's been so long since I've been out for the night that I guess the novelty is enough." She bit her lip, "It's just…it _does_ feel a little funny to be out here, tonight, when…"

"When you don't know where your son is,' finished Aerith.

 _Well, it's not quite that I don't know_ where _he is_ , Celeste thought, remembering the look of nervous excitement and foreboding on Jane Porter's face as she'd whispered those words… _the Underworld._

 _It's more not knowing whether anyone's doing anything to find him yet_.

She'd considered confiding what she'd been told to Amphitrite, but had decided against it. It was just a place. a place shrouded in mystery, ghost stories, and threats both real and rumored.

As much as Celeste might love to imagine setting off into those deep, underground pits to free her son from the clutches of whichever den of thieves he'd fallen into, she was just one woman, and Amphitrite was another, only older, however fiercer she may be than Celeste.

And yet sitting on it was almost as bad as not knowing a thing at all.

"I need the distraction," she said at length, "Until something else happens, until some news comes out… I can't just sit and stew on it. That's not me."

It wasn't Sora either. Could there be any other reason he had bolted out into that storm to chase Riku? Maybe she was just as restless as her son, after all. Just better at hiding it.

"No, I guess not," said Aerith, tapping her fingers uncertainly on the table, "Well, it if means anything, I'm glad I can be your distraction."

Celeste chuckled, "Not just a distraction. You've been a very good friend to me. Really," she felt her stomach twisting up a little as she spoke, "I know I'm not exactly the most fun person to be around, and I'm what you might consider 'old'…"

Aerith shook her head, "You're not old. Life just hit you too fast. Happens to the best of us."

Which, though not exactly reassuring, was the most comforting thing Celeste had heard all day.

Tiana's act opened at 8:00 on the nose, with a generous bout of applause and a hearty riff from the band. She was obviously over-the-moon at being up on stage for so many people, and her smile seemed to be a light all its own.

"She's really good, isn't she?" asked Aerith quietly, her head propped up in her hand.

Celeste, who had just been ushering away the waiter (service at the Dalman was apparently not obligated to come accompanied by smiles), nodded, "She's got a knack for it, that's true enough."

Aerith was talented as well, she knew, however shy she might otherwise be. It was hard, that kind of debilitating shyness, that could very well make you your own worst enemy.

Tiana moved like a pro through her first two sets, strutting up and down the stage, a fire in her eyes and a bouncy in her step, never missing a beat.

" _Summertime, kids in the street/We were up on the roof, laughing in the heat._ "

"Would you look at that?" Aerith said suddenly, nodding over to the bar, "I think you've got an admirer, Celeste."

"What..?" Celeste followed Aerith's gaze over to the bar, where she had to take another sip of wine to keep from guffawing.

"What? He's not bad looking."

"He's Sora's history teacher. Mr. Thatch." Celeste explained, patting her chest to keep from choking, "And he is _not_ looking at me."

"He is now," Aerith gave Celeste a surprisingly hearty slap on the back (perhaps Cid had been teaching her techniques after her own misadventures), which only succeeded in dribbling white wine all down Celeste's front.

"Oh my God, I am _so_ sorry…" and Aerith set top fumbling for napkins on the table while Celeste felt her face light up as if from within.

" _That was the last I ever saw of you…_ "

"Er…I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I couldn't help but noticing…" Mr. Thatch was standing over them, glasses wobbling on his nose and a spotted neckerchief in his hand, "Gargling wine is actually very good for you, you know," he handed Celeste the handkerchief, "Kills bacteria."

"Does it, really?" Celeste accepted the hanky with a nodded thanks, shooting Aerith a perhaps none-too-subtle glare as she did so, to Aerith's evident girlish delight, "Thank you."

" _Now it's December, cold and dark/No more rainbows over Central Park._ "

Mr. Thatch looked from Celeste to Aerith, an odd sort of grin on his face, like he half expected to be scolded and boxed around the ears.

Feeling that _somebody_ would have to say something nor, lest they all expire n some formality-induced black hole of social discomfort, Celeste extended her hand to shake, "It's Mr. Thatch, isn't it? I'm Celeste."

"Sora's mother?" he nodded, shaking her hand enthusiastically, "I thought I recognized you…from Parent Night."

" _In this house/No window has a view…_ "

"Sora's mother," she repeated, "My professional name."

Thatch laughed, maybe louder than would normally be considered advisable, "Milo, please. And…" his eyes moved over to Aerith, eyebrows raised in polite curiosity.

"Aerith," Celeste offered, noting that her designated girlfriend of the night's smile had become quite singularly frozen onto her face with this new attention.

" _There's no love here/Without you…_ "

"A pleasure," Milo extended his hand to her, in turn.

Aerith nodded, taking his hand and shaking it, though her enthusiasm seemed more forced than anything else.

" _When you gonna come back home?/When you gonna see it's been too long?/When you gonna come back home?/To me…_ "

"I'm sorry," she said, so soft Celeste had trouble hearing over Tiana's act, "I think…um…I'll be right back, if you'd just…"

"Of course…" Celeste began, but Aerith had already collected her evening bag and hurried off, in the purported direction of the powder room.

Thatch…or, Milo, if that was how it was going to be, frowned, "Oh, dear, I…I didn't mean to… Did I say something?"

Celeste shook her head, half moving to get to her feet, but deciding against it. It suddenly seemed quite clear that Aerith had more reasons than the obvious to imagine Milo was directing attentions toward Celeste.

"I think she's just shy," Celeste said simply, "She'll be back."

Milo nodded, "Then maybe I should get out of your way. I…um…I would have hated for your friend to get the wrong idea."

"No, I'm sure it's not your fault." Celeste stood up, half moving to go toward the stairs Aerith had ascended, but stopping herself.

" _Standing at the door, and I turn the key/I'm holding my breath and half expect to see/You lying on the bed, smiling up at me…_ "

"She's waiting for someone," she said the words involuntarily, turning back to Milo, "You know how it is."

"She must have thought I was some creeping barfly," Milo laughing nervously, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose, "No, no…I was waiting for somebody too. Not here, though, other side of town. She's sick. Apparently," He looked oddly at Celeste, as though deciding whether or not to tell her something, "Have you had any word? About your son, I mean?"

" _I'm going crazy 'cause I just don't know/Which way you're heart's gonna go/I only pray it leads you back to me…_ "

"Precious little," Celeste clasped her hands in front of her. No point going into discussion about mobsters and their coal mine-fortresses with him. If the DPD wanted so badly to keep their only lead quiet, who was Celeste to challenge them? Amphitrite might, but Amphitrite at least had something that could count as seniority with those people.

"It's mostly been a waiting game at this point," she shrugged, "No news is good news, right?"

"More often than not," Milo put his hands in his pockets, "Still, if we weren't curious creatures by default, we'd be no better than our microbial ancestors."

"I guess that's true," Celeste smiled, looking over to the bar, "Can't be much fun drinking alone."

"Oh, I…I…er…I don't drink," Milo shook his head decisively, "Alone. I don't drink alone"

"A sound policy." Celeste started over to the counter, "Come on. My treat."

"You sure?" Milo looked about as surprised at /Celeste as she currently was with herself, "Er…what about your friend?"

"I'm buying for her too," Celeste said it firmly enough, collecting her shawl and her handbag from the back of her chair, "She _will_ be back."

And what better sight for Aerith to come back to than Celeste enjoying herself, the situation in the palm of her hand, and any perceived threats to Aerith's self-imposed isolation neatly diverted?

" _Darling let your heart/Lead you back to me…_ "

"If you say so," Milo grinned tightly, starting over to the bar, "But I'd be glad to at least go Dutch…"

"Don't sweat it," she assured him, "If this night is teaching me anything, it's that the waiting game is no fun with just one player."

She flagged the bartender over, patting the stool next to her for Milo to sit down. Celeste still wasn't sure what she was doing with all this, but she supposed it was at least _some_ version of what Aerith and Tiana intended.

" _When you gonna come back home?/When you gonna see it's been too long?/When you gonna come back home? To me…_ "

* * *

From what he'd observed of it so far, Larxene's attic had been converted into an all-purpose tomb for old memories and regrets.

 _And you, Axelrod, are the latest addition to the collection_ , he thought wryly, holding up a tattered tee-shirt on which somebody had crudely stenciled twin bolts of lightning in acid green ink.

It was a nice enough spot to spend the night, though, Axel couldn't deny. Sure, the box-spring mattress creaked whenever you moved an eighth of an inch, and a mysterious moaning sounded from the walls whenever the wind blew outside, but the heaps of relics from days gone by were nothing if not comforting.

Axel had always been a sucker for nostalgia.

"Ha! Nice…" he chuckled, flicking open a pair of shiny aviator glasses procured from an old steamer trunk.

"The hell are you doing?"

"Yo?" Axel whirled on his heel to behold Larxene's head poking out of the trapdoor from the second floor landing.

He supposed he didn't exactly look the picture of respectability, what with the baggy tee-shirt, crooked aviators and shapeless rasta cap, but anything to make a lady laugh, right?

Larxene had never been like other ladies.

"You know, when I let you use this room, that was _not_ shorthand for playing dress up with my stuff."

"Okay, first of all, some of this _is_ my stuff, thank you very much," he whipped off his glasses to dangle them in the air, for dramatic effect.

"Thanks for holding onto it, by the way."

"I would've given it to good will, but the needy have enough problems, don't they?" he saw a flicker of something almost resembling a smile on Larxene's face as she clambered the rest of the way out of the trapdoor, pretty neatly considering she was still in her heels and skirt from the office.

"So Looza doesn't mind you hoarding all your spoils of war?"

" _Luxia_ ," Larxene pronounced the name with a steely deliberation, "lets me do what I like with my things. It's _our_ house, not Demyx's, so please stop copying his nicknames. You're worse than that bird."

"I've got a sweeter voice though," he smirked, shaking his head, "And, c'mon, give your little bro some credit, Rene! He's gotten pretty good at trash talk." He grinned, "Not that he didn't learn from the best."

Larxene rolled her eyes, her attention landing on a pile of assorted detritus Axel hadn't yet gotten a chance to further dismantle.

Her eyes lighting up, she reached forward and produced a picture from where it stuck out at the bottom of the pile.

"Here," she crouched down beside him, holding the picture up to the window, where the orange glow of the streetlights provided aid enough to see by, "This one oughta tickle ya."

Axel had already prepared some reflexive quip about how he was ticklish enough as it was, but Larxene had already brought the picture up to his face, and just about every sly comment in his arsenal evaporated on his tongue.

"Whoa…" he whispered the word so quietly he may well have been mouthing it, "Vintage Dugout." He jabbed at the photo with his finger, forgetting in his excitement that such roughness was no way to treat such a priceless relic of yesteryear.

"I remember this," he told Larxene, looking up at her out the corner of his eye.

"I figured you would." She draped a lazy hand over her knee, cocking her eyebrow in that calculating, predatory manner that had made her such a force to be feared in the dusty, tire-shredded barrens north of Twilight.

"God, I was a hot piece of ass," he muttered, tracing the outline of the lithe, angular teen, lying n a mock-seductive pose over the old mustard-yellow sofa, flaming red hair a tangled main around his face, and yet-to-be-used menthol cig poking out from behind his ear, as if waiting for a chance to spontaneously combust, setting all that hair aflame.

"Gt over yourself."

"Seriously, how the hell were you able to resist me for so long?"

"Sheer force of will," she said drily, placing her own finger on the photo next to Axel's, and tracing a line from the younger him to a girl sitting on the opposite arm of the sofa, long legs crossed in a refined elegance that didn't exactly jive with her studded leather jacket, ripped leggings and combat boots.

"I've still got the hat…" she nodded at the beret jauntily placed over the younger Larxene's head, "Somewhere."

"Well, you kept the scarf," Axel tugged gently on the article in question, "Best to have the whole set. Or nothing at all."

"Shut up." She said blandly.

"What? I didn't mean it like…"

"Jesus, I almost didn't see Dem." Larxene moved her attention to the little pipsqueak with the mop of blond curls, struggling to balance a somewhat less-battered sitar on his knee.

"What is he, here, ten?"

"Fourteen, _dingus_ ," she emphasized the word in a husky approximation of her brother, her teeth showing in a genuine smile, "He was a late bloomer."

"Not surprised," said Axel, "You know, all that water kept running dry, and we had nowhere to wash our…"

"Shut up."

Larxene's finger traveled down the length of the photo to the fourth figure in the group; sitting Indian style next to the old record player, his wardrobe remarkably better kept in comparison with the others; checked flannel shirt, worn jeans, very expensive looking construction boots that hadn't seen much use. And, of course, vibrant blue hair piled up in a clumsy bun on top of his head, like a cobalt Holly Golightly.

"Moonboy,' whispered Axel, "You know, I think that;s the closest thing he ever had to a smile."

"For a camera, at least. He smiled a few other times."

Axel looked over at Larxene, frowning, the barest sign of a warning on his face, though not even Axel knew what he was warning her about.

"I hear he's a cop, now," so she was either trying to change the subject or press it; it was always hard to tell with Larxene.

"He is," replied Axel simply, "Really made something of himself, "Kinda like you."

"If it's any consolation, I think you're still ahead of Demyx in the life choices department."

"Don't be so hard on him" he repeated, glad for the chance to talk about someone else, "At least he's not…"

"A fugitive? Give it time." But she was laughing as she turned the photo over.

A neat hand had written in block ink,' _Earthshakers: Twilight Chapter._ '

Beneath that, a familiar, scrawling hand had written, ' _Cool ones only_.'

And, beneath _that_ , in a childish, crabbed handwriting, somebody else had written, ' _Also Demyx_.'

Four different signatures lined the bottom of the flat white surface. ' _Ax, Rex, Moonboy_ and _Rainman_.'

"I almost forgot," Axel chuckled, "we used to call you Rex."

"You're not calling me that, either."

"Why not? It's symbolic of what a fierce bitch you are! Yanno, like the dinosaur." He clawed outward, with a roaring sound that probably sounded more like a drowning cat.

"Well, do _you_ still let people call you Ax?"

"Yes, actually," Axel smiled, thinking again of Riku in the rain, of how Axel had almost lost his grip when he'd thanked him, called him by that stupid shorthand nickname and then ridden of into the storm and, presumably, oblivion.

"Friends only." He nudged her in the side, " _You're_ my friend, Rex."

"Also your unwilling accomplice," she said in a somewhat more even tone, brushing some loose hair from her face.

"Hey, hey, hey, what's this about 'unwilling'? You were the one with the weekend invitation. I would've been cool with one night."

"Demyx would have had a fit if I turned your poor, innocent bum out into the cold," she shrugged, "Where _is_ Demyx, anyway?"

"What, you don't know?" Axel set the photo down and gestured to the pile of clothing and accessories he'd been rummaging through, "What do you think I was doing when you showed up?"

"Making an unholy mess, as usual."

"Dem's having some sort of concert thing out by the old steps, he told me this morning, wanted to know if I was gonna make it."

Whatever levity had been on Larxene's face melted away at that, and suddenly that same cold look of disbelief she'd worn so well yesterday evening returned.

"You're on the run from the law. the police are looking for you, you can't just go to a _concert_ …"

"I was looking for a disguise!" he waved the aviator glasses in front of Larxene, who scowled.

"Do you even understand how much I'm putting on the line for you? You're damn right I didn't have to let you hide out here for a hot minute, but I did, because of…because of…" she snatched the picture up from the floor, setting it back down on a dresser higher off the floor.

"Old times?"

"Loyalty, sentiment, stupidity, take your pick."

"You're not stupid."

"Somehow I don't think you're qualified to tell me that."

"He sounded really excited about it." Axel shrugged, "Larxene, I guess he missed me."

"Yeah, well I miss a lot of things too, it doesn't mean I want them to just walk right back in through the door like the whole world hasn't changed while they were gone."

"Well, maybe he was just stoked over having a friend in the audience for a change." He got to his feet, his head almost bumping up against the sloping roof of the attic, "Have you ever even been to one of his gigs?"

Larxene turned to look at him, her eyes narrowed dangerously, "You're really going to play _that_ card?"

"What card? I'm not playing cards, Larxene…"

"I love him, alright?" she said softly, acidly, "I'm probably the only one who does, and the only one who ever will. I think we both know it takes a hell of a lot of love to tell someone they're going nowhere fast, that it's time to man the fuck up and get on with your life."

She looked at Axel for what seemed like a very long time, her eyes searching him as if for some abashed reaction, some heartfelt apology, even a temper tantrum.

"You're right," he said at last, "It does. But…um…between you and me, your bro at least knows what he wants. You want 'fast track to nowhere', look no further," he put the aviators on, smiling softly.

Larxene crossed her arms, cocking her head. Axel may have imagined it, but her gaze seemed to rest for just a fraction longer on the picture sitting where she'd set it on the dresser.

"One day, I swear to God, you guys will destroy me," she said at last, crossing over to a half-hidden brass coat rack in the rear corner, fetching something and turning back to face him, a faded, but still pretty snazzy beret in her hands.

Despite everything, Axel felt a pesky tingling from what he supposed the 'warm and fuzzy' part of his heart was

"That's my Rex," he patted her on the shoulder, "Come on, let's trip the night fantastic."

He met her again in the living room about half an hour later, fully kitted out in the most incognito assortment he could scrounge up from the echelons of lost history.

Figuring that his most noticeable traits were his hair and his tattoos, Axel had likewise taken the effort to cover them both up, with a close-fitting black hoodie (the hood only served to better frame his naturally killer cheekbones anyway) and his trusty aviators respectively.

"How do I look?" he asked Larxene as she descended the stairs, his hands neatly shoved in the pockets of the hoodie.

"I don't want any drugs," she said by way of an answer, adjusting the beret on her head.

In the leggings and jacket, her hair spilling out aimlessly around her shoulders beneath the hat, she may as well have been 17 again, shimming down her fire escape as the sun went down, ready to hop onto her second hand bike and ride out to the barrens at his side.

"If someone recognizes you…"

"I will punch you in the throat and run for the hills. Then it looks like you weren't in on it."

"And I'll kick you in the nads, to complete the picture." Larxene collected her purse from where it was draped over an armchair and started for the door, "Come on, I'd hate to lose out on the hot ticket seats."

Zazu cawed something that Axel supposed was a goodbye as they stepped out into the front garden.

"Bet you never have to worry about burglars," Axel remarked, "Between the musical stylings of Dickface and Luscious Looza's flower arrangements this is a most foreboding dwelling, indeed"

"Luxia's very proud of this garden," Larxene replied, either blind to the irony or, more likely, to rub the irony in Axel's face., "He's very talented."

"Oh, I'll bet." Axel nodded at the flowering marigold shrubs as they approached the sidewalk, "That where he is? Some sort of flower arranging convention? Hardcore."

"He is at a business conference in Denver," Larxene spoke through tight-lips, as if unwilling to invite another opportunity for Axel to make fun.

She must have forgotten that making fun was second nature to him.

"What _do_ you guys do?" he asked, approaching his bike and swinging one leg over it, nodding to Larxene to get behind him.

"We are _not_ ," she said flatly, staring at the bike as if it were some foreign pestilence prepared to devour them both.

"We are _too_." He grinned at her, lowering his shades down his nose so he could look up at her expectantly, "You're not telling me you've lost your riding legs?"

"In your dreams," she replied at once, "But if you think I'm gonna piggyback on you the whole way to the steps, you've got another thing coming."

"Fine, whatever." Axel swung off the seat and indicated that Larxene could take the handlebars, "Ain't I a gentleman?"

"Larxene didn't comment on that, but she did seat herself at the bike without further complaint, indicating that Axel should sit behind her.

"If you get handsy, you lose the hand."

"Duly noted," Axel looped his arms around her waist, careful to keep them from growing too close around.

They set out down the high road that overlooked the lake, a fresh night breeze in their faces and a precious dearth of traffic to block their way.

Axel almost laughed at the exhilaration of it all, were he not afraid of getting Larxene's hair in his mouth.

"Senor Financial Assistant!" Larxene called over her shoulder, as they crested the Promenade hill.

"I thought he called it Cardinal Knowledge, or something. "

Larxene brought the bike to a smooth brake at the top of the hill, "My job. I'm Senior Financial Assistant at _X_ -Corp. You asked."

Axel raised his eyebrows, "Huh. Not bad for the rebel biker brawler from the Dugout. I can't even hold a fast food job." He scratched at the back of his neck, "So who are you senior assistant _too_? Bet he's got a top hat and a mustache."

"Marluxia."

"And a flower in his lapel, like a classy gent."

Larxene pursed her lips, as if expecting Axel to say something else. Axel, being fine tuned to what other people thought and expected of him, was pretty sure Larxene thought he was going to make some insinuation that Larxene only had her job because she was dating her supervisor,

Well, the thought _did_ cross Axel's mind, but he wasn't stupid enough to say it aloud, which seemed good enough for Larxene.

"It's a job," she said at last, revving the engine and starting off down the hill, ripping the air from Axel's lungs before he could think of another comment.

They reached the steps at about half-past ten. Grand and ruinous as they'd always been, the two dozen stone benches made a sort of natural amphitheater, ringing a grassy sward that, in turn, overlooked Twilight and parts west which, in this part of town, was mostly just mountains.

"Guess we missed the overture," quipped Axel at the echoing sound of drumbeats and sitar strums, "Rainman's playing to a full house."

Larxene put the bike in park, looking around at the half dozen or so people scattered up and down the steps, in various stages of inaction.

"Fuller than usual," she adjusted the beret on her head, swinging herself off the seat and nodding for Axel to follow her.

The Cardinal Points were grouped in the sward at the base of the steps, their instruments hooked up to an amp system so archaic it may as well have been run through tin cylinders.

"C'mon," Axel threw his arm around Larxene's shoulder, "Midway center. _Best_ place in the house, every time."

As they descended the steps, taking them two at a time, Axel got a better look at Demyx's merry band of misfits.

Dem was at the forefront, lounging back in a collapsible chair, bandying his sitar on his knee like some hillside Pappy with his banjo.

To his right was a pretty brunette who may as well have walked off an old Top of the Pops airing, draped in beads and feathers as she was.

"Is that a tambourine?" Axel whispered to Larxene as they sat down.

"Don't get me started on that thing,"

On Demyx's left there was a stout, shaggy-haired goober in a shapeless knit cap and cargo pants, ratting out beats on a drum set that looked about old enough to have been of good use when the Israelites won the Promised Land.

To round off the compass, as it were, another boy, about the same build as Demyx, except maybe a little more muscley, stood just adjacent to, but a little ahead the others, singing into the mic.

" _All had water run dry/Got nowhere to wash my clothes/All had water run dry_ …"

"Christ, is that really the only song they know?" he asked Larxene.

"Oh, they've got about four others. This is just the only one that sounds like music."

Axel couldn't deny that the Cardinal Points had made something out of whatever they could. The lead singer was putting his all into the vocals, nonsensical and repetitive as they were, and the girl with the tambourine looked about half ready to shake herself into oblivion, Peace and Love style.

"Okay, so let me guess group dynamics."

"Please don't."

Axel did, anyway, "Tubs over there, the drummer, he's got this chip on his shoulder because he's always trying to be as cool as our boy and the other one. Other guy, the singer, he's got eyes for Starchild, that's tambourine…"

"Yeah, I figured that."

"…But she wants Rainman, and maybe Rainman wants her, I don't know if Dem understands goals and all that, but…"

"Wrong, wrong, and wrong." Larxene told him, smirking despite herself.

"What?"

"Olette, Starchild, is Hayner's cousin. Hayner is Other Guy. Olette's been dating Pence, Tubs, for about a year. Don't ask what they see in each other, but they seem happy. Pence is their manager because Hayner never finished high school and Dem can barely count past twenty."

"He sure knows how to bring in the crowds," Axel remarked.

"Not that point. Hayner, therefore, has no interest in kissing his cousin…"

"Oh, well then _that's_ just perfectly boring…"

"…If he wants to kiss anyone, it's Demyx."

Axel stopped short, doing a double take from Larxene back down to the band, where Hayner and Demyx were just leaning into the mic for the chorus.

" _Brown girl in the ring/Tra la la la la/There's a brown girl in the ring/Tra la la la la la…_ "

"You…you sure?" Axel asked her, aware of how overtly flabbergasted he must sound.

"Pretty sure. Hayner's been into Dem for at least a year, but I don't think Dem's figured it out yet."

'Well…well how do _you_ know?"

"Well, like all women I have a mind reading crystal implanted in my hippocampus." Her smile flattened into a tight line, "I'm good at reading people, you must remember that. Look at him."

So Axel did. He studied Hayner as he and Demyx wrapped up the chorus. They were both smiling, big, goofy smiles, the kind you only made when you couldn't care any less what people thought of you. Axel had felt similar smiles creeping up his face on the open road. Something about being in your element, the one thing you were better at than anything, anyone else.

" _I remember on Saturday night/We had fried fish and Johnny cakes/I remember one Saturday night_ …"

Hayner looked at Demyx, not some subtle, corner of the eye thing, but an actual _look_ , a look straight in the eyes, and Axel saw, regardless of how far back he was, a kind of adoration, some wide-eyed expression of wonder upped to eleven.

Demyx patted Hayner on the shoulder, in accordance with the ' _Beng a deng_ ' at the end of the verse and, though Axel had only just seen this kid for the first time today, he got the sincere impression that he might have allowed Dem to knock him to the ground, if it meant he touched him.

"Jesus, Rene," he breathed without looking over at her, "You're good."

"Years of experience," she said heavily, looking back down into the pit.

A sudden prickle went up his arms, and Axel realized Demyx had finally noticed the two most engaged people in his audience of single digits. His eyes fell on Larxene first, moving to Axel immediately next to her.

Axel wasn't about to question he integrity of his disguise, so he gave Demyx the benefit of the doubt for recognizing him at once, though he did lower his aviators just a tetch, so Axel could get a glimpse of his eyes, as he shut up a thumbs up, just the way he and the other would often do back at the Dugout, even if it was only to shut him up for a minute or two.

"We love him," he whispered to Larxene, "We really love him. Go on, let's flash our tits."

She laughed, a short, musical laugh, and waved down at Demyx, twiddling her fingers like a mother saying goodbye to her second-grader for the day.

"He doesn't know why the hell I'm here," she told Axel as she waved.

"Probably not." Axel shrugged, "But why should he care? You're here, and I think you just made his night."

Could there really be any other explanation for why Demyx tossed in an extra verse, getting up from his chair and strumming his sitar vertically, like some subway musician? Hayner seemed just as surprised by Dem's sudden surge of enthusiasm, though if his churlish laugh through the lyrics was any indication, he didn't mind.

" _I remember one Saturday night_ ," and this time, Demyx looked right up at them, a ridiculous grin on his naturally ridiculous face, " _We had fried fish and Johnny cakes/I remember one Saturday night/We had fried fish and Johnny cakes._ "

"Bendga deng," both Axel and Larxene muttered at once. She looked at him, a brief expression of bemusement on her face, before she laughed again.

Axel laughed too, not entirely sure why he was, and feeling suddenly like a kid again.

* * *

"How do you _do_ that?" asked Tidus as they slipped through the main doors of the Dalman Club, into the crowded front lobby.

"How do I do what?' Selphie cocked her head in an expression of exaggerated childish innocence, partly to bust his balls and partly to test how bouncy the new conditioner made her air.

Both results were most satisfactory.

"That…that _thing_ you do."

"Move over, Wordsworth, there's a new poet in town," she frowned at him, "No, really, stick to football."

Tidus rolled his eyes, adjusting the lapels of his baby blue sport coat with a perfectly Tidusy confusion

"I mean, lay on the charm play the role, get everybody to believe you."

"We talking about the bouncer?" Selphie patted Tidus with the flat end of her clutch, "Easy peasey, no charm required. He and my Mom go way back."

"You weren't even nervous?" H frowned, now scratching anxiously at his Adam's apple (Selphie had insisted he shave his peach fuzz before heading out; patrons of the Dalman Club were either clean shaven or well-manicured in their growth).

"Do you get nervous when someone throws a ball at you from forty yards away"

"Well, no, but…"

"It's a skill set. Now, come on, I promised you a night of revels and I do not back out on my promises."

With that, she led Tidus on into the main room, where the floor had been opened for dancing. It was a busy night by all appearances.

 _Good. Even less reason to worry about being caught in the act_.

Really, Selphie didn't see what was wrong with two almost-adults deciding to eat, drink and be merry after having a really shitty week, but social conventions had never been anything but inconvenient.

"Fancy place," commented Tidus, nodding up at the stage, on which a bedazzled vision in green was singing her heart out, "You know, I would've been fine with pizza."

"First rule of Saturday with Selphie,' she wagged her clutch in his face, "Either you let yourself be spoiled or you don't bother. It's go big or go home with me."

"Hey, I'm not complaining," he grinned rakishly at her, and Selphie rolled her eyes, "I'm just saying, you didn't have to…"

"I never have to do anything. Be honored that I do things for you." She clapped him on the back, nodding to the bar a few steps up from the dance floor, on the lowest of the four dining tiers, "Come on, you need a drink. Loosen yourself up."

"I'm plenty loose already,' he laughed, following her up the stairs all the same.

"We can always get looser." Selphie leaned against the bar, smiling at the tender on duty, "Moscow Mule, please."

She looked expectantly at Tidus, who blinked vacantly at her.

"Um…I guess two," he nodded at the bartender.

Selphie raised her eyebrows in approval as the bartender set to work, "Okay, be honest with me, do you even know what that is, or were you just copying me?"

"I know what it is!" said Tidus, his was turning a most attractive shade of puce.

What was it about boys? So few of them knew how to lie, and the ones that did never lid about anything worthwhile anyway.

"Then I hope you can keep up." Selphie winked as the bartender slid two copper mugs of frothy, caramel colored cocktail down to them.

 _They don't even ask for I.D! Heaven is smiling on us, tonight._

She raised the mug up to him in a toast, "To Sora and Kairi. May they return to us in due haste, before we kill each other."

"Amen," he clinked his mug against hers, producing a pleasant clinking from the two burnished cups.

Selphie raised her mug to her lips, taking a tentative sip; of the cool, fizzy fusion of vodka and ginger beer, at first delightfully icy and, later, comfortingly warm.

Her mother had whipped one of these bad boys up for her whenever she'd had a cold. Perhaps not the very beat parenting strategy, but it had made the flu a much more fun experience than it would have been originally.

Selphie's ruminations were cut short as Tidus took his first sip, more like swig, and promptly sprayed the whole blamed beverage down his front.

"Oh my God, _really_?" she said through breathless laughter, "You're supposed to sip it, not _inhale_ it."

"Son of a…" Tidus spoke through dry coughs, "What the hell _is_ that?"

"Russian donkey piss," said Selphie, giggling, "It's in the name, you know."

Frowning at the spreading stain on his shirt and jacket, Selphie signed and fetched a napkin from the bar, "Come on, you big baby, let me clean you up. Vodka stains wash out, but the smell is forever, and we can't let your suit get ruined. It goes so well with your eyes,"

"It does?"

Which was all the indication Selphie needed that his mom had bought it for him.

"Yes, it does. You may never have noticed, but you have _blue_ eyes," she tweaked his nose with her napkin, moving down to his shirt, to wipe at the mark, "Blue like this shirt, isn't that frigging mind blowing…"

"I get it," he put his hand over her own, stopping her before she as half down cleaning, "I'm fine. You…um…you don't need to do that."

"We've been over this. I don't need to do anything I don't want to do. And what I want to do now, is dance."

She took another sip of her drink, producing a twenty from the super-secret compartment in her brassiere and sliding it toward the tender "Save our seats, there's a sweetie. We'll be back."

She winked at him, taking Tidus by the hand and starting down the stairs toward he dance floor.

"What's gotten into you?" he asked her, laughing as he panted.

"A cup full of spirits, with a side helping of my own naturally positive personality." She wrapped her arms around his waist, noting with some muted aggravation how he tensed up as she did so.

"Oh, come on, I'm not going to do you dirty right here on the dance floor," she told him pedantically, "You put one arm up… _here_ ," she guided his right arm up to the small of her back, "Your other arm goes…" she moved his left one to her lower back, but he beat her to the punch.

"Here." He said, smiling yet uncertain, "Right?"

"Yes," Selphie cleared her throat, "Yes, that's right, that's…um…that's exactly how. Now…" she beamed, "just follow me."

And he did, reasonably enough, though Selphie felt him on her toes at least twice. No point bringing it up though. Her head was already buzzing, and apparently vodka was as good for sore toes as it was for the flu.

"Sucks we got a slow song," commented Tidus at one point, "I could've shown you some sick moves."

"Slow isn't that bad," she told him, with a smile, "You may never have guessed, but Selphie's stomach is not made of lead."

"Never would have thought it," he shook a loose lock of hair out of his eyes, and Selphie noticed his face was glittering with sweat, either from the Mule, the lights overhead, or from embarrassment.

After what may have been ten or twenty minutes of revolving slowly in a circle (ballroom dancing wasn't nearly as much fun as T.V made it out to be), they stopped revolving around the room and the room started revolving around them, with Tidus as some sort of weird, unmoving fixing point.

This was about the time when Selphie started supplanting her sudden loss of depth perception with philosophy, as her own dear mother was oft wont to do as well.

"Cynthia Tremaine," she said in a soft, faraway voice.

"Who?" Tidus gave her a slack-jawed look.

"One of the girls that were kidnapped. The waitress. She…um…she worked here, went missing after a late shift."

At Tidus' questioning look, Selphie elaborated, "I…um…I've been watching the news. You know, since…um…" she smiled woozily, "Thought it was best to know all I could."

Tidus nodded, as if h understood, "Oh. yeah, yeah…sure. Um…you know, you don't have to be worried, Selph. Anyone who wants trouble with you tonight, they're gonna have to go through me."

" _Not_ why I mentioned it, first of all." But she felt herself laughing at him, the whole room melting into an even more confused hodgepodge of colors and shapes than it was already, "But thank you, very much, Monsieur. If someone tries snatching me up from this crowded dance floor, I know I'll have a protector close by."

"Hey, don't laugh, it could happen. Ever seen those movies, where the guy's in this real crowded place, like a carnival, or a dance, or, like, the bazaar…"

"The bazaar, totally," Selphie chimed in.

"…then his girl or his friend or somebody goes missing, and he can't find them because…well, it's crowded."

"Oh, yeah," she nodded gravely, "Well, I guess I'll just have to stay where you can see me. "

"Don't worry, I'm not letting you get away..." he broke off, as if realizing what he was saying.

They stood there, stock still in the middle of the floor, in some sort of paralytic silence, until the song ended and the next one began.

"Let's…um…" Selphie shifted from foot to foot, "let's go finish our drinks, what do you say?"

"Yeah," Tidus set her arm down, twisting his hands as if unsure what to do with them, "Yeah, let's do that."

They started back up the stairs, Selphie actually quite proud of herself for not tripping over her own feet as often as she had imagined she would. Tidus walked up a step or two behind her, once or twice tentatively brushing her back with his hand, either to keep her from falling back or to keep himself from falling forward.

"Ugh," she stopped herself on the stairs, looking back and forth (maybe up and down, it was getting hard to keep everything straight), "Wait, wait…were we up, higher, or…or are we…" she looked down the stairs, trying to figure out if they'd been at the bar.

"Ti, I think we're lost." She giggled shrilly, leaning against him, "You know, I had one sip…"

"I counted two…"

"Oh, _B.S._ ," she slapped him lightly on the chest, "I blame you."

" _Me?_ What did I do?"

"You…you let me dance with…with you, and now…and now you just made me…" she cleared her throat, nodding over to the bar, "I'm dizzy, let's go... _shit_."

She stopped short, Tidus almost walking into her, "What?"

"Never tip before the fact, someone's just gonna screw you over.' She started closer to the bar, nodding at the coupe sitting in the stools she and Tidus had reserved, yakking it up and having a gay old time.

"C'mon," she sighed, already half turning, but Tidus stopped her.

"What? Screw that. That guy took your money, he sure as hell's gonna earn it."

"Or what? You'll make him give it back?"

Tidus frowned, askance, as if he'd been thinking of doing just that before Selphie pointed it out.

"I got this, don't worry," he assured her, patting her on the shoulder.

"Not worrying, don't sweat it," she followed him the rest of the way to the bar, where Tidus swung himself into the stool next to Guy Interloper, indicating that Selphie should sit on his other side.

Guy Interloper was currently in the midst of telling some rambling anecdote to his girlfriend, "So, she's absolutely _oozing_ this thick, algae like compound."

Tidus, who had clearly been about to say something to break the two interlopers up, froze in place, his mouth hanging open in a kind of terror.

"And, well, _somebody_ had to put their hand up in there, and I certainly didn't want to do it."

" _Jesus Fuck_ ," whispered Tidus, so close to Selphie's ear that it almost tickled.

In a sincere, but admittedly desperate attempt to drown out whatever the hell those two were talking about, Selphie flagged over the bartender, "Hey, remember me, sweetie?"

He cocked his eyebrow at her, moving his lips to speak, though somehow all Selphie could hear was Guy Interloper Algae's Adventures.

"But, you know, I was the only on with long enough fingers…"

"So you did it?" his girlfriend was giggling very other word, either sincerely enthralled or even more bombed than Selphie was, "Oh my God, what did you find?"

" _Two Mules over the rocks, please_ ," Selphie said, loudly and clearly to the bartender, "Maybe you still saved ours? Save us all the trouble."

The bartender frowned, "Sorry?"

And, suddenly, with the clarity of one waking from a long dream, Selphie realized this wasn't the same bartender from before.

"Oh, Tidus, wait, we're at the wrong…"

"Nothing but a nest of beetles, I swear there must have been two dozen crawling all over..."

"Son of a bitch, man!" Tidus rounded on the Interlopers, oblivious to Selphie's warning, "You know, if you wanna talk about your girlfriend' exterminator, do it somewhere fucking else, some of us are trying to have a good time, kick back, relax, forget about how shitty the world is for a few hours…"

"Oh my God," muttered Selphie looking past Tidus to the Interlopers who weren't Interlopers, truly seeing them for the first time, "Ti…"

"…and, you know, it's kinda hard to do that when random strangers just have to come right in with _no_ respect for other people, which, yanno, is kinda a douche thing over all, and…"

"Yes, actually, it kind of _is_ a douche thing to do," Interloper's girlfriend wobbled to her feet, her shawl crooked on her shoulders, and her face flushed a coral pink, no doubt from her own separate infusion of liquid courage, "It's also very rude to eavesdrop, but I don't suppose your mother ever…"

She trailed off, her eyes widening just as Tidus' jaw went slack.

"Mr. Thatch," Selphie waved at her favorite teacher with an abashed smile, "Sora's Mom. What a small world it is,"

She grabbed Tidus by the seat of his pants, dragging him back down to his stool with an indignant 'oomph'.

"Tidus, Selphie," Sora's mother breathed, "I…er…"

"We're really sorry," said Selphie hastily, "We thought you were…we got lost."

"Yeah, yeah," Tidus nodded, "So…um…who was she?"

"Who was whom?" asked Thatch.

"The chick with the algae substance."

"Oh my God," Sora's Mom laughed, bringing her mouth up to stifle the noise, while Thatch dithered, running his fingers through in hair in that endearing manner of eternal hopelessness he had.

"Um…well, actually, that was a…um…a statue from a, er, a dig site in Guatemala." He brightened up somewhat at the mention, "Fertility idol, with…er…with holes carved in it, for incense." He cleared his throat loudly, "We'll be discussing similar idols when we get to Mesoamerica which should be…er…" he took another sip from his glass (a stiff scotch and soda, Selphie observed with some approval) "…around Christmastime."

"Oh, that sounds just great!" Selphie laughed buoyantly, nodding again to the very confused bartender, "Once we finish with Skara Brae. Two Cosmos, please, sweetie."

"A _Cosmo_?" Tidus turned to her as though she'd just suggested they drink cyanide.

"Something lighter. You guys may not have guessed, but Tidus and I have been with the Spirit, tonight."

Sora's Mother frowned, though little hiccups seemed to be punctuating her words, "Selphie, honey, maybe having another cocktail isn't exactly a good idea." She hiccuped again, patting her collarbone frantically, "For any of us. But you and Tidus…"

"Oh, I have it covered," Selphie waved the problem away, "We just slipped right in, no questions…"

"I don't think Celeste…" began Thatch.

" _Celeste_ , is it?" Selphie asked, maybe a little too squeakily.

"…I don't think she was commenting on your ingenuity, Selphie. You…um…you don't exactly look in the best of form. To put it kindly."

"No, no, I guess I don't,' Selphie turned to Tidus, "You know, I feel kinda stupid, 'cause I was all braggy about how _I_ can hold my liqueur, but I guess not tonight, so now Ti probably thinks I'm a liar…"

"I don't think you're a liar!"

"Boys suck at lying, eh, Celeste?" Selphie didn't even realize she was using the Christian name until after she said it.

But Celeste tittered, shaking her head, "They do." She looked from Tidus to Selphie with an odd sort of smile on her face, and added, "I think it's nice, that you two are…um…that you're having a good time. Being there for each other. That's important."

"Amen," Tidus lifted an imaginary glass in a toast, though it may be that his vision was suffering too, as he aimed it at the bartender, who by now seemed to have given up on them.

"Well, I'm glad you have someone too," Selphie nodded at Thatch, "Ask him to tell you about House 8's flue, he'll love you for caring."

Thatch almost fell out of his seat at this, sputtering confusedly, while Celeste blushed, laughing, "Oh, no, no…you've got the wrong idea. Mr. Thatch and I ran into each other tonight. I was here with another friend, but…"

"…but I may have frightened her off," Thatch cleared his throat, wiping his glass on his jacket as if to avoid looking at either Selphie or Celeste, "No flue required."

"Oh," Selphie blinked, "Well, it's a good thing you're together, anyway. It's not a really fun time to be alone, that's why I told Tidus we should come down here."

"You didn't…" Tidus began, but Selphie gave him a quick kick under the counter, which hushed him up at once.

A little grumpily, Tidus said, "Yeah, and…um…you know, we've been thinking about Sora, and Kairi."

 _Well, there goes the subtle approach._

"I don't doubt you were," said Celeste, "I know what good friends you've always been to him."

Apparently warming up to the subject somewhat, Tidus went on, only slurring about half the words that came out of his mouth, to his credit, "I just…I wish there was something more we can do for him, you know? Just sitting around and getting wasted…" he stopped, looking at Celeste, "Sorry."

"Believe me, if I was going to be offended, that would have happened a while ago." Celeste smiled, "But I understand."

Selphie wasn't entirely sure about that. Sure, she didn't doubt that Celeste must be an absolute bundle of neuroses waiting to be released at any given moment, but the lady looked like she could patiently wait out the End Times without breaking a sweat.

Selphie wasn't sure she could think of a comparison to that. That sort of iron-willed resolve must be a time tested and battle toned skill. The result of being disappointed too many times, for a very long time.

"Well, I think it's getting _pret-ty_ late," Selphie said suddenly, extended her hand to Tidus, "Probably oughta be heading back Destiny way. There's bound to be a rush when this gig lets out," she indicated the crowd around them, "Don't wanna get bogged down in traffic."

"Oh? Yeah, yeah," Tidus jumped of the stool, giving Selphie's extending hand a reflexive high five as he did so, "Dad needs the truck for work."

Selphie closed her fingers with an aggrieved sigh and slid off the stool on her own, "It's been real."

"You're driving home?" asked Thatch querulously, "Perhaps that's not…um…maybe that's not the very best idea, Selphie. Times are dangerous enough as is…"

"Oh, it's fine. There's a phone booth in the square, I'll just ring up Wakka, you remember Wakka."

"Vividly," said Thatch in a thin tone that demonstrated just how well he remembered her brother, and just how well a designated driver he would make.

"Are you kids sure?" Celeste already had a tremulous hand on her purse, as if already ready to spring into action, "It really isn't safe to be out on your own this late."

"No worries, really," Selphie assured her, "I've got my very own valiant protector," she clapped Tidus on the shoulder, to his evident surprise, "He has personally promised to keep me safe for the night and, if I am satisfied with his work, the foreseeable future."

Tidus mumbled something, but he was either too drunk to say it or Selphie was too drunk to understand it.

Celeste's eyes twinkled at them, "You take care of each other, then. If you need anything, please, you two know where to find me."

"We'll check in, don't you worry," Selphie wrapped her arm around Tidus's shoulder, starting for the stairs, "Give Marie an extra kiss from me."

"Definitely," but Celeste's voice was already fading under the bars of the last number of the night.

" _Take a look around now, change the direction/Adjust the tuning. try a new translation..._ "

"You know, we can't go out anywhere without running into people," she remarked as they passed through the side door of the ballroom and into the black-and-white pattered guest lounge, "Next time we go out, I swear, I'm picking the most _Avant garde_ place. A cave in the desert, where they charge 500 bucks for a bowl of rattlesnake stew, how's that sound?"

"Sounds pretty hardcore for you, you sure you can take it?"

"If it means some peace and quiet for a few minutes, yes." She sighed dreamily, her eye drifting off to the side, where the black and white marbling on the wallpaper had suddenly begun to swirl and twirl into each other, like bubbles in a lava lamp.

"She's sweet, though," she added, "Not, like 'milk and cookies' sweet, or anything, but…she's cool."

"Little scary sometimes," interjected Tidus.

"Oh, is Shnookums afraid if a thirty-something in a clearance rack cocktail dress?" she pinched his cheek, "Precious. I swear, though, sometimes she doesn't even seem real."

"Yeah, and she's not the only one," he grinned at her, those bright white, surfer dude teeth of his glinting unnaturally in the warm light of the exit corridor, "You were like a whole different person back there."

" _Don't look at your man in the same old way/Take a new picture_ _…_ "

"You know, contrary to popular belief, booze doesn't _change_ who we are, it just lets the hidden, secret parts of us shine out." she raised her eyebrows mysteriously, "No shame, no judgment, just the truth."

"What's that, more of your Mom's wisdom?"

"Blurb from a bottle of Schnapps, but close enough."

" _Just because you don't see shooting stars/Doesn't mean it isn't perfect..._ "

"I saw a bit of the true you shining out tonight," she poked her finger lightly in his gut, "Valiant protector."

Tidus looked at her, "Yeah, about that…you didn't have to shout it out in front of Thatch and my best friend's Mom."

"Why not? Frankly, I'm flattered." she shrugged, "Kairi would roll her eyes out of her head, but sometimes even the most kickassy woman could use a strong man to kick ass at her side."

She demonstrated a kick of her own as they passed out the broad front doors onto the patio, though with her somewhat impaired coordination, she just tripped over her own feet and may have tumbled headlong down the stairs if Tidus hadn't swooped in to catch her just before her head hit the concrete. though in her haste fair tripped over her own feet again. Tidus, thinking fast, moved to catch her, right there in the doorway of the club.

" _Can't you see..._ "

"Better save the ass kicking for the morning, huh?" he laughed softly, easing her back up to her feet.

Selphie attempted a comeback of her own for that one, but Tidus's wavy locks were brushing against her face and all she could do was giggle like a schoolgirl.

"Oh my God, you're tickling me…" she reached up to slap him playfully on the face, but she only harmlessly swatted the air a hand's breadth away from his head.

" _It's the stuff that dreams are made of/The slow and steady fire..._ "

"Okay, time for valiant protector to take you home," said Tidus clearly, starting down the stairs with Selphie in a bridal carry, "Where's that phone booth?"

"What phone booth?" Selphie asked absently, to which Tidus groaned heavenward.

"So, there's Phase 1 of my mission."

"What's Phase 2?"

"Not get beaten up by your brother."

"Oh, if Wakka tries anything, I'll shut him right up," Selphie declared, "You wait, he's gonna be _so_ P.O'ed that we're dragging him away from the lovely ladies of _Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em 2: Drizz's Revenge_."

"Ooh, man, that's a classic!" and this time Selphie couldn't tell whether he was joking or not.

" _It's the stuff that dreams are made of/It's your heart and soul's desire..._ "

They were crossing the cobblestones of the square in from of the Dalman, Tidus stepping carefully around the fountain, which may or may not have been calibrated to move with the tune of the music from inside the club, now echoing through the night on mounting speakers above the square.

"It's really weird," she said, suddenly.

"Sure is."

"You don't even know what I'm talking about!"

"Yeah, well, everything's weird," he smiled down at her, "But if you're gonna be specific…"

"Being the only ones," she looked up at him, maybe just imagining the tremor underneath her voice as she spoke, "Just you and me."

"Oh. That." Tidus nodded, "Yeah, it…um…it is pretty weird. But...um…good weird."

"Is it bad?" she asked suddenly, grabbing at the lapels of Tidus's jacket, "Is it…do you think it's bad that…that Sora and Kairi are God knows where and here we are, just…just…" she stopped, "What are we doing?"

"What?" asked Tidus, in that dogged, stubborn, single-minded, all-totally _boy_ way of his, "We're...um…we're…"

"Oh, dammit, Tidus, do yo need me to spell it out for you?" she tugged on his jacket, intending to bring his face closer to hers, but in her confusion Selphie forgot she was being carried by him.

The resulting splash in the fountain was enough to sober her up right quick, though.

Puttering and gasping, she opened her eyes, and there Tidus was, already rolling up his sleeves to reach into the fountain and get her, laughing through concerned words.

"Jesus Christ, Selph," he reached his hand through the thin curtain of water, blinking back tears of mirth. He was blurry to her, Selphie noticed, and not just because of the fountain water.

"I don't want to scare you, girl, but I think you're drunk."

"I am!" she declared, feeling me sober than she had all night, "So are you."

She took his arm and pulled him into the fountain with her, heedless of anyone who might be watching, only laughing as he went sprawling on time of her in the shallow, cold water, hair dripping wet, and that precious blue suit of his likely ruined forever now.

"What…what was that for?" spluttered Tidus indignantly.

"Trying to wake you up," and she kissed him, square on the lips. He tasted like vodka, ginger beer and some kind of sporty cologne, and the vague bristles on his face indicated he hadn't shaved that peach fuzz of his nearly as thoroughly as she would have liked.

Tidus pulled back, breathing deeply, looking at her with wide eyes.

"Selph…" he asked her quietly, a husky overtone creeping into his voice, "Selphie, are you sure?"

"I never do anything I'm not sure of," she wrapped her arms around his neck, shivering at the barely perceptible tension in his shoulders as she brushed her fingers down his back, "Do you?"

Tidus pond his mouth as if to answer her, but in lieu of that, he just pulled her in for another kiss, and another and another, as the water rained down on them from above, and guitars and drumbeats surrounded them from 360 degrees.

" _It's the stuff that dreams are made of..._ "

* * *

Larxene wasn't sure there had ever been a time where she'd really 'got' her brother. Whether it was the sitar, the bird, the shark tooth necklace, or the Brown Girl in the Ring, Demyx had never really made a lot of sense to her.

Of course, Dem _had_ to take that to mean that she couldn't stand him and shunned him on a daily basis, as some sort of punishment for his sinful excesses or some crap.

Still, it made these rare moments of evident gratitude all the more gratifying, so there was that.

"I can't believe you showed up!" Demyx looked up at her, face parted in a buoyant grin as he returned his sitar to its case with more care than some mothers tucked their infants in at night.

"Yeah, well, I almost didn't," Larxene kicked back against the lowermost step with the heel of her boot, "But then I figured, what the hell?"

"What the hell?" echoed Olette with a tinkling giggle that was almost as infuriating as her tambourine, "That's the spirit. You never want to miss a moment in life, Larxene. The best ones only come by once."

"Yes, I believe I've gotten fortune cookies to that effect," Larxene smiled a chilly smile at Starchild's simpering face, at the same time wondering if it was hypocritical of her to condemn Axel for using some nicknames, and embracing others. Probably, but who the hell cared?

Olette smiled again, the way she always did when she had run out of sunshiny platitudes, and went off to help Pence loud the drum set into the back of a broken down old van that Larxene may have assumed belonged to a group of child predators were it not for the crude _Cardinal Points_ stencil along the side.

"Come on, sis," Demyx looked up at her, shark tooth waving like a pendulum beneath his chin, "We both know you didn't come out here just you could ruffle my crew's feathers."

He shut the sitar case with a decisive thump, skipping over it to plop himself down on the step beside Larxene in one fluid motion, "Ax got you outta your funk!"

"Shh!" Larxene looked back and forth hastily, but the pitiful excuse for an audience had already departed, and the Three Stooges were too preoccupied with wrestling the drums into the van to pay any attention to them.

"Nothin' to be ashamed of, sis," Demyx shrugged, "Y'know what they say about modern love."

"Something stupid, no doubt."

"You can't hide it. You came to life again the second you saw him in the living room." He reached up and snatched the beret off her head, twirling it around on his hand, "Didn't think I'd ever see you wearing _this_ thing ever again."

Larxene snatched the beret back, "Look, Dem, not that I expect you to comprehend things like this, but I was never in a 'funk'. Luxia didn't show up and put me under some kind of spell to make me forget the kind of person I used to be. What happened is this little thing called _growing up_ , which happens to most people in life. 'Most' being the imperative word."

Dem sat back, a tiny frown playing on his face. Not a sad one, though, or even a disappointed one. It was the kind of look he got when he felt he hadn't lost an argument (for what counted to him as an argument), but figured there was no use pressing it further. It was one of his more admirable, as well as insufferable, qualities.

"Fine, Larxene, maybe you did grow up. but growing up doesn't mean you just change everything about you. That would be a total drag, wouldn't it? You go to sleep one day, free and happy and with nothin' standing in your way but you, and then you wake up in the morning and you're just some tired office suit with a total buzzkill for a boyfriend and…"

"I haven't forgotten, alright?" Larxene cut him off, holding her hand up to quit him, "If I'd forgotten all about Axel, all about that time, do you _really_ think I would let him stay with us? Look, you were barely a kid back then..."

"Oh, yeah, totally, how could I have time to understand all your grown-up stuff when I was still learning my shapes and colors?"

"How's that going for you, by the way?"

Demyx smiled, "Young in body, wise in spirit, sis. I'm not stupid now, and I wasn't stupid then."

"You know, _bro,_ like a lot of things in this world, it's way more complicated than you realize.".

Demyx gave her this almost piteous smile, like she was a grade schooler who, bless her heart, was working her hardest on a question, to no avail, "It doesn't have to be."

"Yo, Dem!" Hayner came strutting over to them, hands in the pockets of his cargo shorts, "We still heading to the Cabana or is this family reunion gonna take all night?"

"I'd invite you to partake, but you didn't bring any potato salad." Larxene said flatly, to which Hayner snorted with another 'Ain't I a stinker?' look at Demyx, who snorted in kind, like a pair of hippie warthogs.

Hayner, quite evidently, had never quite forgiven Larxene for insisting the Cardinal Points stop practicing in her living room, to spare Marluxia get any more clangor-induced migraines, which did nothing to weaken Demyx's narrative that he was a stuffy square with no sense of fun.

In Luxia's defense, though, there had been only so much of Olette's goddamn tambourine Larxene could take before it began appearing in her dreams, so she could definitely sympathize.

"Nah, we're going," Demyx turned back to Larxene, "You wanna come? They make the _best_ chorizo, it lights your mouth on fire…"

"Yeah, no fire for me," but she patted Demyx on the shoulder in thanks, "but thanks for the invite."

"Working on the weekend, Larxene?" Hayner laughed, shaking his head, "Sucks, you've got my sympathy."

"Keep it. I do so love what I do," she adjusted her beret on her head, "Good vibes be with you. Go easy on the tequila, don't drink and drive, be good tippers…"

Hayner rolled his eyes, muttered some good natured rebuke under his breath and set off toward the van, sharing one last look with Demyx as he went.

Larxene again recalled Axel's look of stark bemusement, his incredulity when she'd told him about Hayner's secret torch for her brother. Some things just never changed.

But, as Dem himself would tell her, he was his own person and didn't need her involving herself in his personal affairs. So she would keep her mouth shut until Hayner decided to come right out and say what he felt.

Demyx was laid back enough to wait that long, she figured.

"You're not really gonna go back home and write up financials." Demyx said once Hayner had walked out of earshot, "You've got an Ax to grind."

Larxene thunked him lightly on the side of his head, as Dem dissolved into peals of bubbly giggles.

"I have an Ax to _find_ , yes, before he gets spotted by some concerned citizen and we all get locked up for aiding and abetting."

"Sweet rhymes, sis," Dem winked at her with a snap of the fingers, as he began some rambling singsong, swaying back and forth, " _Got an Ax to find…baby, got my ax to…_ "

"Leaving, now," Larxene got to her feet, "stay out of trouble."

"Ditto," Dem stood to join her, hefting his sitar case up with a surprising ease for someone of his size.

He took two blessed steps away, before stopping and turning back, as if he'd just remembered something, "And, look, sis, you probably don't want to hear me preaching…"

"Very astute."

"…but I'm gonna do it anyway."

"Of course you are." She crossed her arms, "And…?"

"He came back here for a reason,"

"Oh, yes, for some higher purpose, just like Jesus! How could I not have..."

"No, I'm talking about a _reason_ …"

"You want a reason?" she leaned forward, putting her hand lightly on his shoulder, "He had to get the hell out of town, and I was the first patsy that popped into his head. I know, it's too poetic to speak aloud without weeping."

"Look, Larxene, I'm not saying that's not why _he_ showed up." Demyx gently shook her off, smiling some soft, knowing smile, "But there's something more. He probably doesn't even know it yet."

It took all the resolve Larxene possessed to keep from laughing aloud, "Ah, so he was _guided_ here by some force we are too small and mortal to comprehend, to fulfill the great cosmic duty of watching the Cardinal Points live in concert." She waved her hand around to indicate the emptying amphitheater, "Higher purpose accomplished; I guess he's done."

"Fine, laugh all ya like," he shrugged, "Look, I'm not talking about some mystical zen and spirits stuff, really."

"Oh, so there's nothing mystical about it, right? Just the way the world works."

"Yeah," he answered simply, patting her one last time on the arm, "Yeah, it is. Night, sis."

He went off to the van, calling some faded greeting to his bandmates. Larxene lingered just along enough to watch Hayner throw his arm around his shoulder, before she sighed and started up the stairs to the main road.

She resolved not to panic about Axel's whereabouts just yet. It seemed clear enough to her where he'd gone.

There was a fresh autumnal breeze blowing off the lake as Larxene headed down the Promenade road. The streetlamps lining the sidewalk were lit, casting a warm and inviting glow on the closed-up shopfronts and parked cars.

Clear, cool night like this, and Larxene only needed to close her eyes to conjure up the sound of rumbling engines and the smell of exhaust, of old leather, of Saix's expensive cologne and Axel's careless laugh, the glint in his green eyes, always able to find a joke somewhere, and never ceasing to be amused by it.

She took the worn sandstone steps off the main Promenade two at a time, hands in her jacket pockets and, as she descended to the lower, considerably less manicured streets of the waterfront.

And, as she descended, the relative silence of the night was cut through by a voice, a carrying, soft voice, speaking in a soothing monotone, as if reading aloud.

" _And like a dying lady, lean and pale/Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil_ …"

Larxene found the bike parked up against a faulty streetlamp, still flickering on and off without warning. Beyond it, a grubby one-story building, chipped bricks and grimy windows, with a chipped sign over the door, a sign that had once advertised a florist, though it had long since faded away.

The wrought iron gate was hanging half open, creaking in the slight breeze. Larxene was only mildly surprised to find that the voice was coming from it.

" _Out of her chamber, led by the insane/And feeble wanderings of her fading brain…_ "

A soft orange light ebbed from the doorway. Lamp light, Larxene knew, warm and inviting against the night, yet in discord with the increasingly tinny tones of the voice reading aloud.

" _The moon arose in the murky east, a white and shapeless…_ "

" _Yeast!_ " another voice, somewhat softer, distorted by some vague electric hum, interrupted the reader, and Larxene stopped at the gate, her fingers twining through the diamond-patterns of the metal bars.

" _What?_ " the reader broke off with an exasperated laugh, " _No, it's a_ mass _, a white and shapeless_ mass _._ "

" _The hell? That doesn't even rhyme!_ "

Larxene bit back a soft chuckle of her own, peering through the slits of the grate at the low, cozy little hideaway that had been as good as home to her for two whole, impossible years.

" _It's not_ supposed _to rhyme, you savant,_ " Larxene wasn't sure it was possible for anyone to say the word 'savant' with any kind of endearment, but clearly it had been too long, " _The rhyme scheme is AA, BB, CD…_ "

" _What are those, codes for enemy warplanes? Who comes up with these rules anyway? None of this makes any frigging…_ "

Larxene pushed forward on the gate, the hinges creaking the way they always had.

Axel was sitting at the foot of the overstuffed yellow couch, one knee lifted up to his chin, staring with rapt attention at an old double-deck tape recorder, from which those two somewhat higher, if not quite _childish_ voices were coming.

He turned to her at once, blinking furiously as if he didn't quite recognize her at first, "Oh…" when he spoke, his voice had a husky, raw quality, as though he hadn't used it hours, despite what Larxene knew to be true.

"…hey. I was just…" he nodded around at the unpainted brick walls, the crooked dart board, the faded band posters, the colorful, if frayed carpets scattered with no particular method on the concrete floor.

Axel cleared his throat, shrugging around at the Dugout, "…yeah."

He turned back to the tape recorder, which had by now skipped on to an impromptu one-man jam session, courtesy of Demyx, plucking away with a somewhat less tuneful version of his current dubious tunefulness.

Larxene shook her head, stepping down to join him by the recorder, "You don't have to turn it off." Cringing at a particularly sharp twang on the sitar, "Familiar noises of home."

Axel nodded, tapping the tape recorder gently, "Yanno, I totally forgot about this old monster. We used to record _everything_ …"

"You _forgot_?" Larxene moved to sit down beside him on the green and red pile carpet, "You and I went dumpster diving for this hunk of junk at 2 A.M during _sleet season_ ¸ and you forgot?"

"Yanno, I _have_ been wondering about that bruise on my thigh. Shaped…"

"…like Minnesota. If you squint." She leaned her head to the side, feeling his mane of hair brushing just slightly against her face. Axel didn't seem to notice though.

"You weren't looking for me, were you?" he asked suddenly, frowning, "I didn't mean to just go ghost, but…"

"Nah, not much looking required. I shoulda figured you weren't gonna pass up a visit to this place."

Axel lowered his head in resignation, "It's just…I guess I just didn't expect all of this to still be here. It's like…it's like some freaky time capsule," he reached into the shoebox next to the recorder and waved a cassette tape in Larxene's face.

"Where else would it all be?" Larxene lifted one leg up to the sofa, so that she was lying, almost leisurely down onto the floor, "You don't just uproot the Earthshakers."

Axel cocked an eyebrow at her, whistling softly through pursed lips.

Larxene sighed, "Fine. Boring truth: I own the place. Some squatter's rights small print, it wasn't like the city was doing anything with it."

Luxia had given her one of _those_ looks when she'd first brought up the notion. A sly smirk, his finger slowly tracing the outline of his ear.

" _I know, I know, it's a useless old hole in the wall, but it's a great buy and it keeps Dem out of our hair…_ "

" _You really love that old place, don't you?_ " Luxia didn't often smile, but whenever he did Larxene got the sense that they were private smiles, just for her, because nobody else merited a smile from him.

" _Who am I to rob you of your past?_ "

Dammit, how she sometimes wished he would.

Axel was nodding in approval, "Huh. Props to you, defending our legacy. Yanno, once we all get famous, you can make it into a museum."

"Or a memorial," she quipped.

"Downer," said Axel flatly, looking back around, "So…what? Demyx and the Points practice here, or something?"

He plucked something off the floor, twirling it in the air as though he were flipping a coin. It came down on the backside of his hand, and Larxene saw a sitar pick, with the letters _CP_ stenciled on it in blue.

"Demyx and the Points?" Larxene repeated.

"You know it sounds sick."

Larxene didn't dignify that with a comment, "They practice here sometimes, yeah. I set them up with their own private studio and they still bitch about not getting to raid my fridge twice a week."

"Ooh," Axel leaned forward, lips parting in one of his signature wolfish grins, "which one's the bitch? My money's on Tubs, but maybe Starchild's got some teeth under all the Patchouli and turquoise."

"You'd be surprised."

"Just don't tell me it's Heyday."

"Hayner," Larxene corrected, noting that Axel had at least _tried_ to use his actual name.

"I hate stereotypes." He finished simply.

"Well, I don't know about stereotypes, but they're all shrill little bitches at heart."

"Well, they can all go stuff themselves," Axel sprang to his feet, hauling Larxene up to stand with him, "Like, there is _nothing_ wrong with this place! We used to _live_ down here, I swear, I saw more of this place than my folks'."

Larxene nodded, "Yeah, me too, come to think of it," she let her eyes drift around the room, coming to rest on a full-size rendering of three acid green lightning bolts on the right wall.

" _So…what's the pun?_ " Axel asking her lazily, tossing her a new aerosol can, " _Ooh! Ooh!_ Electric personality. _Ha! Slick, Rex._ "

" _Why does there need to be a pun? I like lightning. Lightning is kickass. Nobody fucks with lightning; it can kill you._ "

" _Or bring you back to life_ ," Saix interjecting from the sofa, raggedy paperback open in his hands, boots pressed up against the wall.

"Haven't stopped by in a while, though," she continued.

"Too many memories?"

"Not enough time."

"Assisting all those senior financials must be a burnout, I guess." Axel flinched the moment the words left his mouth, as if anticipating Larxene to deck him.

She didn't, smiling despite herself, "And, anyway, it's all just so…depressing."

"Depressing?" Axel looked stupefied, "We even looking at the same place? Look…that there," he pointed at the dartboard, hanging askew between a collapsing bookcase and a pile of old vinyl records, "is the field on which history finally learned who was bossest at darts…"

"Bossest meaning the champion kept whistling whenever someone else had their turn to throw."

"History is written by the winners, Rene," Axel quipped, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and steering her around to look at the battered grand piano, now mostly buried beneath a heap of sheet music, record cases and old recording equipment.

"And here is where the world at last learned that _Heart and Soul_ is a deadly weapon when played by the wrong fingers."

"Don't you dare…" Larxene began, but Axel had already brought his fingers down on the keyboard, creating a thunderous clangor that brought her hands up to her ears, wincing through pained laughter.

"We should all consider ourselves lucky your bro traded in keys for strings." Axel took to looking around the room again, "And…this stuff!"

He led her over to an oversize cardboard box, stuffed almost to bursting with dozens of meticulously labeled VHS tapes. Axel began flicking through them, "Dem's handwriting," as he began reading those labels that caught his eye " _Lyle and Lara's Wedding_ , _Chrissy has her baby_ , _Simone shoots Phil_ …wait, who are these people, who's your brother following?"

Larxene laughed, "Not from our time. They're from that stupid soap opera he watches. The kid's obsessed."

"Anything to keep him off the streets," Axel shrugged, setting the video record of _Xander's clone_ , whatever that was, back in the box.

The tape switched again, skipping from whatever freestyle strumming performance Demyx had been giving to a somewhat, but only just, louder Dem, speaking in that whiny, pedantic tone must usefully affected by know-it-all eight year olds or, in this case, young teenagers with unwarranted superiority complexes.

" _You need, like, a_ theme _, man. All that gloomy doomy poem stuff is_ so _lame…_ "

" _It's not doomy gloomy,_ " had Saix always sounded do above it all, so bored? Not that irt was hard to pull that off when you were talking to Demyx, but still.

" _It's supposed to make you think._ "

" _Yeah, but…why the_ Moon _?_ "

Larxene heard Axel breathe a laugh as soft as a whisper next to her, again abandoning the reality of the Dugout now, with her, to the Dugout from those summers ago.

" _Why_ not _the Moon? It's about the oldest symbol of mystery known to man. It's...evocative, primal, intimate…_ "

" _Okay, let's take it easy there, for a second, there may be kids listening._ Your _kids, maybe. Hey, Moonboy's future kids!_ "

Axel looked over at her, a bittersweet looking in his eye, "You know, I never asked him,"

"Never asked him what?"

"Saix. We…um…we ran into each other a couple of days ago."

She raised her eyebrows; for the moment, Larxene had forgotten that, since Saix was a cop now, it only made sense he and Axel may have crossed paths since his spot of trouble.

"God, he wasn't the one who booked you, was he?"

"Nah, not enough seniority, I guess. I got back to calling him 'Moonboy' right away. Never asked him if he was still moony for the moon, like back in the day."

"Why wouldn't he be?"

Axel shrugged, "Well…he's _changed_ , a lot, yanno. He's got a badge, and cop friends, and..."

"Adult responsibilities?' Larxene mocked retching, "Ooh, I think I'm gonna puke."

"You haven't see him, Rene, you wouldn't get it. It's just…it's hard to imagine him still curled up with a book of Bitch Shelley poems…"

" _Byshe Shelley_ ," Larxene corrected, but it seemed to her that Axel had only mispronounced the name on purpose, the way he'd always used to do.

"…staring up at the moon like it's the best damn thing he's ever seen in his life."

Larxene paused, reflecting on that, sitting down on the sofa and patting the spot on the cushion next to her for Axel to sit beside her, "He couldn't have changed all that much. You don't just sever a chunk of yourself whenever you start a new chapter in life, Axel."

"Maybe one of these days you can teach me how it's done, yeah?" he smiled, the red teardrops under his eyes standing out strikingly against the paleness of the rest of his face, as though all the blood had been sucked up into them.

" _There are a_ bunch _of cool moon songs!_ " Dem of Dugout Past was saying, " _Seriously, if I have to walk in here to hear you reading about creepy clouds and cloying fog or whatever the hell again, I'll just stop coming by…_ "

" _I don't want to shock you, but maybe that was the idea._ "

" _C'mon, just give it a shot…_ " and he was already picking away at the sitar, despite Saix's protests, which must have been too feeble to make it out on the recording.

" _We'll be shadows in the moonlight_ /" Dem's singing voice had hardly changed much in the last five years, though to his credit Larxene supposed he was better at holding a note, " _Darlin' I'll meet you after midnight…_ "

" _Jesus, what are you, 60?_ " but Saix's protests went ignored, as they so often were.

Noting that Axel was staring vacantly at the tape recorder, as if half expecting it to explode in their faces, depositing Dem and Saix right there in front of them as if they'd never left, Larxene shrugged, "Would you believe I never wrote the instructions down? I dunno I…I guess there's not much work to it. You just…wait until something, or…or someone comes along to help you along to the next chapter, or whatever."

 _Until someone from the past comes back, to turn you back to the beginning_ , but she tried to ignore that thought.

" _Hand in hand we'll go/Dancin' through the Milky Way…_ "

"Wait for someone to come along," Axel repeated softly, "You've got your Luxia, Dem's got his Cardinal Points…Saix's got his new buddies down at DPD, and me…" he sighed, "That's my trouble, I guess."

"What trouble?" she frowned, "I know you have… _people_ , you wouldn't be on the run right now if you didn't…"

"Nah, I've got people, you're right. I just don't think I ever wanna turn the page. I hear it gets depressing, later."

" _And we'll find a little hideaway/Where we can love the whole night away/We'll be shadows in the moonlight/Right up till the light of day…_ "

"Growing up is always depressing," she said faintly, but firmly, "At first. But, once you get used to it, it's…"

"What?' he looked piercingly into her eyes, and Larxene saw a vague shimmer of tears. Tears, Axel and tears, she wasn't sure she even had a precedent for that.

"Freeing, liberating, exciting, sexy. I need adjectives, Rene."

" _Oh, the night is young, and baby so are we/I'm gonna make you glad you came, just wait and see…_ "

"It's worth it," she said at last, feeling her voice choke up in a way she would never have allowed just an hour ago, "And nothing worth anything is ever easy, Ax, you remember that, don't you?"

" _Oh, you won't need a thing/Just bring your love for me…_ "

Axel closed his eyes, just briefly, and Larxene saw a tear escape at last, trickling down across its stationary red counterpart with such careless abandon that it might have been trying to prove a point.

"Vividly," he replied at last, leaning forward to kiss her.

" _Darlin' I will do the same_ …"

Larxene's first confused, desperate thought was, _no, no, this isn't right, he shouldn't be doing this, you shouldn't be letting him_.

But the thought that followed that, in a somewhat cooler, more sturdy voice, added, _Don't do that. You knew this was going to happen the second you saw him._

At the moment, Larxene didn't feel like debating which was truer than the other.

She wrapped her arms around Axel, kissing him back, tangling her fingers in his hair the way she had all that time ago, yet now there was a new sort of desperation to it, a new haste, a new awareness that Larxene knew Rex had never had.

And maybe that was one of the benefits of growing up.

"We shouldn't be doing this, should we?" Axel asked her, hoarsely, moving back so his lips were inches from her own. There were tears on his face, and his hair was already standing on end as if, in some moment of passion, Larxene actually _had_ sent bolts of lightning through him.

"We both know we wouldn't be here right now if we both did just what we should be doing," and she pulled him back to her, kissing the tears from his face, going down his neck to his collarbone, feeling her hands on his jacket and tossing it across the Dugout.

The sofa creaked under them, but it probably could have collapsed to springs and sawdust without either of them noticing.'

" _We'll be shadows in the moonlight/Darlin' I'll meet you after midnight…_ "

Larxene felt Axel's lips on her forehead, his hands down her thighs and, Luxia or no Luxia, new chapter or none, she felt her legs close around his waist, and the soft little gasp he made against her brow was enough to make her 17 again, fresh and dusty from the road, wrapped up in some pagan embrace with her best friend and, inexplicably, her first lay.

She reached out for Axel's belt and, with the deft fingers of one who has never quite forgotten an old task, unclasped it, "We're going to regret this in the morning," she told him, only half joking.

"I'm already regretting a lot," he smiled at her, helping to ease her shirt over her head, "What's another thing on the list?"

" _Hand in hand we'll go/Dancin' through the Milky Way_."

* * *

 **A/N:** Believe me, my somewhat cringeworthy earlier days on here taught me very well the perils of transcribing songs into a fic. So I tried to pick songs with distinctive rhyming patterns...more poetic sounding, so it's more fun to read.

If you're interested in the actual songs...

Tiana sings two Carly Simon songs in the two Dalman Club scenes: "When You Gonna Come Back Home" and "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of"

Besides the return of the "Brown Girl in the Ring", the tune Demyx sings for Saix on the Dugout tape is "Shadows in the Moonlight", a classic country tune turned into a rock piece in the 80s. The version he sings is inspired by country artist Anne Murray. You can imagine why Saix thought he was weird.

Also, the Byshe Shelley poem Saix reads for Axel is the aptly named "The Moon".

Chapter 10 will be out this coming Friday, September 23! See you there.


	10. Honor Among Thieves

Chapter 10, Honor Among Thieves

* * *

 **A/N:** Sorry for the lateness of the hour...but this chapter took a bit of time to proofread. A lot of things I had to make sure were just right. So, after last chapter's little reprieve, this one returns us to the Underworld stories, and several revelations.

Enjoy!

* * *

"So…what, are they like mimes?" the de Vil woman sneered, crooked ebony cigarette holder positioned with a somewhat contradictory elegance between two fingers, "They just stand there in those masks, ears open and mouths shut?"

Jafar frowned, crossing his legs in his easy chair, looking tiredly from his erstwhile roommate to where Jane and Shock were standing by the meal tray, arranging the two place settings for dinner.

"They can speak just fine, I'm sure," as he wrinkled up his nose at the pungent odor of tobacco, "You can't very well deal blackjack as a mute, now can you?"

"I hear sign language's come a good long way. Chimpanzees can order at restaurants now, if only they were allowed."

"How excellent for them," Jafar looked back at the two Elysian girls. Jane couldn't deny an uneasy tension took hold of her whenever his gaze rested on her for any amount of time.

 _Don't be silly,_ she told herself now, as she'd been telling herself all day since she'd first come to learn Jafar was staying at this place, _You're wearing a mask, for one thing, and for another he's never even seen you up close before._

"Presuming you two _are_ able to talk," Jafar continued, "I don't suppose your employer has forbidden you from speaking with us?"

Jane gave Shock a look. Her new colleague was, after all, something of a seasoned vet around here. The wiry young woman lifted her head from the dish of steak and potatoes she'd been arranging, lifting a pale, skeletal hand up to adjust her mask. The painted image on it was something vaguely resembling a Latin American effigy, a ghoul mask to frighten away grave spirits.

"We can talk, yeah," she had a high, thin sort of voice, surprising for a girl like her. De Vil, to whit, cringed at the sound of it.

"If you want us to talk."

"Oh look, they even have something resembling wit," De Vil nodded approvingly, "Perhaps, then, my dears, you can tell us just how long we're supposed to be imprisoned in this moldering cell?"

Jane wasn't sure the Green Room could be best described as a cell, though it was somewhat moldering.

"The boss has you down for lunch tomorrow," shock replied with a simple shrug, as if they were talking about a job interview or some such, "He's real finicky about schedules. Never a minute early, never a minute late."

"Like the bitter certainty of death," de Vil drawled with another pull on her cigarette, "See, I'm getting used to all the fruity puns already. You ought to hire me, doll me up in a mask and have me sell whiskey and cigarettes to dope peddlers. Care to join up, Jafar? You'd look smashing in a mask."

The unscrupulous attorney's upper lip curled back from his teeth in an expression of sour contempt. De Vil, for her part, had now turned her attention to Jane, staring long and hard at her face with such attention it was all Jane could do not to collapse into a quivering mass on the floor.

 _Oh, come now, you're made of sterner stuff than this, you know that. If Jafar doesn't recognize you,_ this _one certainly won't. if she's the type to stay home for the 6:00 news, I'll eat my…_

"Charming little squiggles, darling," de Vil shook her cigarette holder in the general direction of Jane's mask, specks of tobacco drizzling down onto the marble tile floor of the suite, "Chinese? Japanese? Chimpanzees?"

 _Oh God._

After much debate earlier in the day, Jane had decided that perhaps the American accent she'd displayed for Esmeralda was not her best bet at anonymity ion this place. Therefore, she'd opted for a somewhat tighter delivery of her usual speech, to remove some of the emphasis for her accent.

"Greek, mostly," she said simply, tracing her finger down one particularly exhaustive Neo-Atlantean character on her mask. It had taken her about an hour back in her room, but Jane had managed to finish designing the one personal aspect of her Elysian girl uniform. Teal paint, with various Neo-Atlantean pictograms going up, down and sideways along it. The act had calmed her down, if nothing else, and it was no more loud than some _other_ girls' masks that Jane had seen

"Arabic too," Jafar commented, "Attractive gibberish, wouldn't you say?"

Jane froze up, struggling to find words, "Oh, I…I can't really understand any of it. The letters just looked…pretty."

"The best and brightest in this place, I tell you," said de Vil drily, "I'm sure you were on your way to law school when you got your calling to be a tavern slattern."

Jane briefly considered explaining about Steffy Resnick's stint in prison on her nineteenth birthday, but Shock was looking at her in a way that suggested that might not be the best idea.

Jane suspected Shock didn't fully believe the entirety of Steffy's backstory, but even if she did doubt the veracity, Jane doubted she had any idea who she _really_ was. Apparently, embellished and creative histories were a grand favorite of the Underworld's bustling workforce.

"Lay off the girl, won't you?" asked Jafar.

"Oh, look at _you_ standing up to defend these weak and helpless young flowers," de Vil looked over at Jane and Shock, in a stage whisper, "Don't buy it, believe me, this one has a track record with fillies your age."

Jafar snapped up to his feet, a full lithe six feet of cold, impersonal disdain, as he looked sourly from de Vil to the Elysian girls.

"Has anybody ever, once in your life, told you that silence is a virtue?"

"Perhaps in a court of law, Jafar dear, but I've got nothing to hide." De Vil smirked again, "And, either way, I'm sure these two hear a dozen stories worse than yours before breakfast, and they don't say a word, isn't that so?"

"Very so…" began Shock, but de Vil cut her off, "Actually, silence is starting to sound like a fine option, dear, my head is splitting."

She got up to cross over to the meal tray, sniffing gingerly at the food, "I daresay it's not poisoned. Most sensible poisoners would tamper with _edible_ looking food. Less obvious." she held the wind bottle up the to the light for closer inspection (even the above ground hotel rooms at Elysian Fields only had the narrowest of windows, for privacy's sake, so Esmeralda had explained) and sneered in distaste, cracking it open with her scarlet, talon-like nails anyway.

"Swill, the lot of it," she continued, pouring a very generous portion into her glass, "My old man ran a nightclub once upon a time, you know."

"Yes, I believe I've heard something to this effect before," said Jafar disapprovingly, collecting his plate from the tray, "More than once."

" _He_ knew a good bottle of wine, even if he didn't know a budget from his bunghole. It's always the money that ruins us," she downed half her glass in one swig, cocking a severely charcoaled eyebrow in Jane's direction, "Mark that, dear. You'll have to take my womanly advice for a tip, since your illustrious mobster of a boss made off with my personal affects."

"He will return them, I'm sure." Jafar sat flatly, "These people are criminals, yes, but not common thugs. They won't steal your pocket change."

"Pocket change is it?" Cruella asked with a sudden shrillness, rounding on Jafar so fast her hair slapped Jane fair across the mask, knocking it almost askew so Jane had to straighten it at once, knocking Cruella's half-filled glass to the floor, where it shattered along with a (mercifully empty) gravy boat and an (unluckily full) salt shaker.

"Oh, now look what you've done!" scolded Jafar, as Jane went down to her hands and knees at once to clear up what she could.

 _Well, for once it isn't_ your _mess. There's a refreshing lack of responsibility with this whole anonymity shtick, now, isn't it?_

"Never fear," she said quietly, "I'll manage…" but it was highly unlikely either of the Green Room's unwilling tenants were paying her any mind at all.

"What _I've_ done?" de Vil bellowed, encroaching on Jafar who, though he was clearly trying his damnedest to save face, couldn't keep from retreating a step or two farther back, " _What I've done_?"

"Yes, you incipient woman, or is there some other impoverished relative to blame this mess on?"

" _This mess_ wouldn't be bothering anybody if you hadn't gotten us caught up in this garish hellhouse in the first place!"

" _I_?" What in heaven had _I_ to do with any of this?"

"Oh, fuck," muttered Shock, crawling over beside Jane, removing one of the colorful patchwork dishrags she had hanging from the waist of her dress (a cute touch, Jane had to admit, and undoubtedly very handy), "Come on, we'd better clear this out before these two kill each other or start shagging."

Jane nodded in agreement, accepting the rag Shock offered and, as she did so, taking notice of the carved wood underside of the dresser. The article of furniture was an old, but well-maintained piece, carved up and down with images of wildflowers and vines, in accordance with most of the furniture in the finer suites.

It wasn't the design that grabbed Jane's attention, though, so much as how close to the floor the lower wooden panel was, and what ample space there was to hide something behind it.

 _There's an idea! Honestly, I should have thought of this before._

De Vil was still railing at Jafar, waving her cigarette holder about like some flimsy blunt instrument, though the cloud of noxious fumes this constant movement produced was a certain sort of intimidating in and of itself.

"If you hadn't kept us back at the old crone's house, these Styx and Stones people wouldn't have gotten the jump on us, my _baby_ wouldn't have been turned into scrap metal, and the boy wouldn't have got away!"

The boy again. Riku, if Esmeralda was to be believed. Jane cocked her ears, at the same time reaching surreptitiously into one of the many nifty pockets sewn into her patchwork skirt (she supposed the abundance of easy hiding places on Elysian girls' outfits were supposed to serve as some sort of cornball metaphor, like everything in this place, but Jane hadn't yet steeled her stomach enough to contemplate it) and removed another coil of thin, barely visible black wire, with a nifty recording box affixed to the end.

 _If the resourceful reporter can wiretap_ one _room, she sure as summer can tap another._

"That is absolutely ridiculous! Perhaps if you hadn't been driving like a maniac, we wouldn't have piled up and the boy would be safely behind bars as we speak."

These two obviously knew a lot about what was going on here, one way or the other.

While Shock scooped ceramic shards of the gravy dish into her rag, Jane deftly snaked the wire under the dresser, feeling across the wall for the phone jack.

"So you'd rather we all got shot?" de Vil laughed a high, cruel laugh, " _You_ maybe willing to live or die for that wretched old witch, Jafar, but _I've_ got priorities in this world,"

 _Yes!_ Jane thought with barely disguised delight, as she clamped the wire to the jack, neatly furling the rest of it under the dresser. Housekeeping at Elysian Fields left much to be desired, Jane had noticed. Nobody was going to push aside a piece of furniture just to vacuum any loose dust bunnies.

"Oh, yes, how could I ever forget your noble purpose, to claw yourself out of the gutter, come hell or high water, and with no care for principles."

" _Principles?_ Ooh, a lawyer lecturing about principles. I'll tell you where you can shove your principles, you oily little snake. If you think you can smooth talk us out of this mess, you've got another thing coming."

Jafar slammed his hand down on the writing desk, loudly enough to cause Jane to turn back to them, though Shock was still hastily clearing away the debris.

"This _mess_ will be resolved. Luxord is a cold man, but he's not unintelligent. They will find Riku, and…"

" _And_?" De Vil repeated piercingly, "And just return him to you, because you asked? As I recall, this all began because they _didn't_ want to let the boy go."

"There will be a ransom, no doubt. Maleficent was trying to avoid such an outcome, but she will consent for the boy's sake…"

"Ah, yes, I'm sure she will. For the _boy_ , her hope and dream, the truest purpose of her life, all that other cloying drivel, I was there too, I heard her talking about him. _You're_ sort of important to her too, I suppose, and mildly famous besides, scandals or no…"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

De Vil snatched the wine bottle from the dining cart with a sudden furious energy, kicking the cart over onto the floor, nearly crushing Shock, who drew back on hands and knees with a muffled, "Oh, son of a nut."

"Oh my goodness," Jane added, hastily scrambling over to Shock's side to see if the girl was hurt.

"It has _everything_ to do with everything!" de Vil shrieked, advancing on Jafar again, " _You_ are important, you are the old woman's attorney, her little partner in crime, her little liaison. She wouldn't want it said that she let her attorney die because she wouldn't pay a ransom, but who the devil cares about the chauffeur? She loves her precious little boy, she needs her slimy little counselor, but she'd leave me to fester and waste away in this hole without batting a dusty old eyelash, because nobody _gives a damn_ whether Cruella de Vil lives or dies!"

With an almost inhuman wail, she threw the bottle of wine across the room and, had Jafar not ducked to avoid it, letting it shatter against the woodland-themed wallpaper, it may well have brained him.

"Perhaps we'd best get going," whispered Jane, helping Shock to her feet.

"Ace idea," the girl nodded hastily, untucking some brittle brown hair from where it had gotten stuck beneath her mask, "I think they already forgot we're here, anyway."

Which seemed like it may well have been true. Jafar was leaning on the writing desk to get back to his feet, trying not to slip in the puddle of wine on the floor, as Cruella stood over him, breathing deeply and with fire in her eyes.

"Who are we kidding anyway? We're dead, no matter what happens. Either they find the boy, keep him for ransom, and kill us, or they don't find the boy and kill us because they don't like loose ends, that's all I've _ever_ been, a loose end…"

Shock closed the door behind them, sufficiently muffling any further noise from the suite as they both stood in the dim interior of the 12th floor corridor.

"My first day was crazier," Shock confided, "Three bar fights, one stabbing, and God knows _how_ many creeps trying to cop a feel."

"Do you think they'll be alright?" Jane asked as they started down the hall, "I mean, she looked right dangerous."

"Eh, it'll be fine," she shrugged, "That type's always got a chip about something. Guy's a total puss, though, I don't blame her for getting fed up."

"He's supposed to be a wiz in the courtroom, though," Jane commented with due caution. That altercation had been about as confusing as it had been informative, and there were enough ideas and theories jostling for attention in her head that Jane felt she simply had to express them to _some_ sort of sounding board.

"A wiz, eh?" Shock snorted, "Lawyers, execs, bankers, all a bunch of big shots with fat mouths, fat wallets, and nothing worth anything anywhere else. I hear he's some groper, or something. Felt up some intern. Figures. It's the only reason guys like him _have_ interns."

Jane almost corrected her to say that Jasmine Ahmed had been a _paralegal_ , but Shock probably wouldn't know the term, and Steffy Resnick wasn't supposed to either.

"A proper creeper, yes," Jane added.

"Proper creeper? What's an improper onelike, then?"

Jane cleared her throat, "Figure of speech, sorry…" she paused as they turned a corner at the end of the passage, making for the elevators, "Really is something, though, isn't it? That whole mess with them and that boy everyone's looking for? Riku."

There was nobody else in the hallway, so Jane didn't feel odd about speaking aloud. From what she'd gathered, Jafar and Cruella De Vil had only been booked way up here _because_ there were no other guests on this floor.

"Seems they were working for Maleficent, his guardian, I think," she continued, more to herself than to Shock, "Then the Styx and Stones wanted Riku, I guess for leverage on Maleficent, so they tried and failed to catch him, and then they tried again when he was with those two," she jerked her thumb over her shoulder to indicate Jafar and Cruella back in the green room, "But he escaped, even though Hades' people got their hands on his escorts. You don't suppose de Vil was right? That she and Jafar are both dead whether they find Riku or not? Or Jafar isn't dead, but she is?"

Shock looked at her blankly as they paused in front of the three bronze-finished elevators (to offset the black marble tone of the walls), "Yanno, boss lady said this would happen."

"What? What would happen?"

"That you would ask all sorts of questions," she lifted her mask just slightly, to expose her dark, almost blue tinted lips, "Look, I don't mind it, but not a lot of folks do in this place. I'd watch out, especially about the whole S&S thing."

"S&S? Oh, you mean Styx and…"

"Technically, we don't know they exist here in Elysium," she added, in a lower voice, "We _are_ a legit front, after all."

"Oh, yes, of course we are," Jane nodded, "Sorry about that."

"Hey, don't apologize to me. It's not _my_ ass on the line if you say the wrong thing around here. I kinda liked having a room to my own, anyway."

But she was joking. Probably. Hopefully.

"But…" Shock added, "you ask me, not saying you are, but you did, I'd say the crazy lady had a mean point. No one likes a loose end, 'specially not down here."

Jane found herself agreeing on that point. If, indeed, Hades wanted Riku for some sort of ransom from Maleficent, it might make sense for him to also hold Maleficent's legal counsel and longtime representative in business for an extra sum. If Cruella was really just a driver, Jane didn't see much reason for Maleficent to pay more than a pittance.

"One less groper in the world, however you look at it," Shock finished, calling the elevator.

"Ah. Yes, that's…that's true. I suppose."

There were better ways, though. There were far better ways of dealing with 'gropers', and their sort. Not just snuffing them out and tossing their bodies into some unmarked grave, no, what good would that ever accomplish?

Exposing them, prosecuting them, giving their victims some sense of justice, of closure, of peace.

Jasmine's face floating back up into Jane's mind, shaking with wide-eyed shame as she recounted her story. Jane knew that expression all too well, yet somehow it still shook her whenever she recalled it to mind.

"I'll all play out,' Shock continued as the staff elevator doors opened with a ping, "It always does. You learn to stop caring _pretty_ fast with this job, Steffy. Or you don't," she added that last part with a grim finality, as if to say ' _Your funeral._ '.

"I call first shift on the floor," Shock declared, pressing the button with the big gold _C_ on it, "You can relieve me later."

"Was that a gift or a punishment?"

"Throwing you into the water, see if you sink or swim," Shock grinned, lowering her mask down properly over her face, "Late night on Saturday is insane, but if you experience it first, ain't nothin' gonna scare you around this place ever again."

"Oh. How kind of you," muttered Jane as the elevator began its descent, slowly down the first ten or so floor, before reaching the main ground level, where the shaft was transparent, providing a winning view of the lobby, casino, and restaurant areas, all alight in bright colors, crowds of patrons and staff milling about.

Jane had to admit, it was very impressive for a gaudy pleasure palace. If only it didn't hurt the eyes so much.

"Catch you later," Shock waved her off as the doors opened, "Try and catch a nap. You'll be needing it."

"I'm sure I will!" Jane quipped, waiting for Shock to leave before pressing the button for the basement level.

She took a moment to collect her thoughts as the elevator commenced this shorter descent. In truth, for a first day on her very first undercover job (self-imposed or no) this had been quite productive indeed. She had two ears in two different strategically significant places, a helpful, if somewhat detached confidant, and the very real chance of getting to the bottom of more than just one story while she was here.

 _This isn't just a matter of a few missing teenagers anymore, if it ever was to begin with_.

While she still had no clues on Kairi, Jasmine or the other four missing women, the involvement of Jafar, and by extension Maleficent, in this whole thing was quite telling.

Jane knew very little about the elderly philanthropist who, as Milo and her own scant access to local records testified, had taken in Riku as a sort of ward when he was barely a toddler. CEO of a real estate company, now worked largely behind the scenes. No criminal history, and no scandals despite the suspicious death of her niece about twenty years ago, but most agreed any rumors about _that_ incident were little more than playground ghost stories.

Indeed, Jane had only come to know anything about Maleficent when she was researching Jafar's own history on the bar. He _was_ something of her public face these days, with her health apparently not being the very best.

 _But if Maleficent has really had ties with the Styx and Stones this entire time…_

That could very well make Jafar a…what was the term?...a sort of go-between, or a middleman. What better person than an attorney to handle that sort of byplay?

And now, if there was some sort of dissension between Hades and Maleficent…

The elevator doors opened on the drab, unpainted service corridor, again quite deserted, with most of the girls either working the floor, the suites, or catching a few minutes' precious rest before their shifts began.

She started down the hall, quite proud of herself for only making two wrong turns in this rabbit run maze. All those years following her father in and out of labyrinthine burial chambers had definitely paid off. Clumsy and lacking in social graces Jane may be, but at least she would never get lost.

The door to Jane and Shock's room was unlocked, and hanging slightly ajar, not enough to give Jane a peek inside, but enough to show that somebody most certainly had entered.

She felt her breath catch in her chest, as her heart began pumping frantically in her breast.

 _Perhaps it's nothing. Shock has that boyfriend she keeps going on about, Lock or Barrel, or hell, maybe both of them. They could just be in for a visit, maybe to drop something off. You haven't stepped a toe out of line, there's no reason for anybody to be susp…_ "

Jane opened the door and stepped inside, to find Esmeralda bending over the dresser, a pair of clunky headphones over her head, string with an expression of muted amazement and disquiet at a little black console that, though Jane could not see, was hooked up to the phone jack in the corner of the room.

Jane shut the door firmly enough to bring Esmeralda's concentration right up to her, ripping her mask off her face in the same motion. Her eyes widened at once and she moved to take the headphones off her head, but Jane beat her to it, practically springing across the room to snatch the left side of the apparatus, pressing it to her ear even as the right side was still over Esmeralda's.

She was wearing some sort of musky, heady fragrance, and her hair was particularly bouncy with some special wash, but Jane didn't take any of the time to notice that, distracted as she was by the first words she heard when she pressed the headphone to her ear.

"… _he will die, I assure you of that much.,_ " though Jane had only heard his voice once before, she knew very well she was listening to the same clean cut, formidably debonair man Esmeralda had kissed in the hall that morning, " _And, after that, we brace for the chaos._ "

" _You know me,_ " a different voice, with a cocky, self-assured quality, " _Chaos is kinda my aesthetic._ "

" _We all have our talents,_ " there was a certain level of steel under Luxord's otherwise smooth, effortless delivery, " _Leave the fallout to me. It will be rank madness for a short time…everybody gets into_ such _a state whenever the Coliseum is open. It may be some time before anyone realizes something is amiss._ "

" _Kinda feel sorry for the poor bastard._ " Yet the laugh never left his voice, " _He never asked for any of this._ "

" _None of us do, and yet here we are. His loss is our gain; it's how this game is played._ " A short pause, and Jane thought she heard a creaking, as of someone raising from their chair, " _Funny. I never imagined you, of all people would have any scruples._ "

" _Scruples? Me?_ " a rough, yet genuine laugh, " _As if._ "

Another creak, and a sound almost like a door opening, " _Hasta manana._ "

" _Until then,_ " Luxord sounded almost bored, as if he'd already found something else to occupy his attention.

Esmeralda yanked the headphones off both of them, letting them clatter uselessly next to the main console.

She was dressed for the floor, too, Jane noticed, but in a different sort of costume, presumably due to her higher rank among the Elysian girls. A purple gown with dagged sleeves and gold thread embroidering the edges, a plunging neckline, and elaborate, impossible brass jewelry hanging from her neck and ears.

She was very heavily painted as well, in a dark rouge and severe shadow under her eyes. Yet, despite all the color in her face, she looked pale and, for the first time in Jane's admittedly limited experience of her, frightened.

"You _bugged_ Luxord's office?" she asked at last, in a strained, hushed voice.

Jane figured now would not be the best time to mention she'd bugged the Green Room too.

"I told you before," Jane retorted, moving to adjust the headphones on the dresser, "I didn't risk all of this just to take a few shorthand notes in a writing pad. I imagine there's only so much a girl can learn disguised as a waitress in this place."

"Are you _insane_? What if somebody found the wire?"

"It's nowhere _he's_ going to find it, don't you worry." Jane snatched up the console from the dresser, "And it seems if I have to worry about _anyone_ playing the snoop in here, it sure as anything isn't him."

Esmeralda nodded toward the drawer Jane had previously concealed the equipment "Because that's the most ingenious hiding spot in the room. There's no way Shock wouldn't have found it while searching for a clean needle."

"She keeps her needles in a shoebox on top of the closet," said Jane shortly, "I know. I asked. Do you trust me that little?" she crossed her arms, "Or is this more a matter of whether or not I should trust _you_?"

Esmeralda faltered, frowning, "You understand I have a lot to lose here, much more than you. I told you I've never let a reporter down here, never, and it's because of that that I've been able to keep this whole thing going. I require a certain amount of trust, _Steffy_ , and…"

"…and you just decide to search my room my first night on the job?"

"No. I came over to see if you needed any help with anything _before_ your first night on the job, and imagine my surprise when I find you've already made yourself right at home."

Jane sighed, "Fine, then. Most kind of you, I'm sure." She jabbed her finger at the console, "Can we please talk about _that_ , then? Because clearly this was a remarkably spiffing investment indeed.:"

Esmeralda pressed two fingers to her temple, bangles clattering on her wrist, "That was…I was not expecting that, believe me."

Jane did. However doubtful she may be of certain things she'd observed about Esmeralda so far, the look on her face when Jane had entered the room to find her listening to the wiretap had been all too real.

"They're talking about killing someone, during the…the Coliseum matches," she said the phrase with a certain forcedness, recalling the somewhat careless manner with which Esmeralda had defended her silence about them before.

"Someone who wasn't supposed to be here, some…some victim of circumstance." She felt a cloying sort of thickness in her voice, "Sora. They're going to kill Sora…something about…about chaos or…or…"

She rounded on Esmeralda, who stood there, wringing her hands in slow, nervous circles.

"We have to _do_ something, of course. He's an innocent boy, his mother…" she remembered Celeste in the police station, the tear tracks on her face, the terror in her eyes as Jane told her just where her precious son was.

"…this isn't even _his_ fight, his problem. Everyone agrees he was only brought here because he got in the way, it's the other one, Riku that they want…" she broke off, pressing her hand to her chest to catch her breath, "Sora's just collateral, they don't give a toss about him, so they can…they can slaughter him as they please, if it furthers their ends, whatever the hell those are."

She looked at Esmeralda, beseechingly, imploring her to agree, to perhaps come forth with some ingenious plan that only she, as a longtime denizen of this place could think of.

What she did say, at length, was "Yes, yes, you're right, it's…it's why you're here, you're supposed to learn about these boys, help them any way you can. People die all the time fighting in the Coliseum…"

"Oh, do they?" Jane retorted, taking a sort of grim satisfaction in the way Esmeralda tensed as she said that.

"Best way to carry out a hit, nobody would ever question that it wasn't just…part of the game." She lifted her gaze to Jane, "All you'd need is the right kind of guy to hold the knife, and Hades has a whole pack of them."

"That…that other man, then,' said Jane, "That was Hades himself? I sort of imagined he'd have a little more of an air about him…"

"You'd be surprised," Esmeralda almost smiled, looking back at the console, "But no…no, I…I'm not sure who that was."

A brief silence passed between them, before Esmeralda said, "You'd best get up to the floor. I'll try and dig up what I can, but until then…" she sighed, depositing the recorder back in the drawer she'd gotten it from, "Keep your head down. For both of our sakes."

She left the room, letting the door swing shut behind her, and leaving Jane standing amidst old clothes and used needles, thinking again of that boy she'd never met, his sad, careworn mother, and the cold, definitive way those two men had spoken of snuffing him out as if he were worth nothing at all.

 _Sora, Riku, Kairi, Jasmine…what's the point of this job if it doesn't help the ones the rest of the world can't be bothered to help?_

People talked a lot of noise about a journalist's job being to report the news rather than make it, but those were often the same people who believed archaeologists just dug up old junk from the past just for the sake of finding things, rather than understanding them.

 _Esmeralda may be content with standing on the sidelines and watching the world fall apart, but I'm not._

* * *

Sora's first thought had been that he was hallucinating. Not the first time in the last few days he'd entertained the notion this was all just some crazy dream. Not even a nightmare, just one of those confused, disoriented, trippy sequences of events that only arose out of the deepest, most peaceful sleeps.

It would explain why it had been so hard to _get_ to sleep in the first place. Sora wasn't sure you were allowed to fall asleep in dreams, at risk of causing one of those existential crises people talked about sometimes.

But, no, after about twenty minutes of lying in his cold, solid bunk bed, staring at the rusty, graffitied metal bottom of the bunk above him, he realized that he was, indeed, hearing a chorus of dogs barking out in what was supposed to be a secure underground fortress run by the mob.

He looked wearily at the bunk opposite him, where a three-foot tall mass of muscle and chest hair was snoring clangorously, the only other noise of note.

Sora had very briefly entertained the idea of getting to know the people he would eventually be playing death games against and alongside before realizing that such 'first day of school' attitudes were frowned upon here.

Nobody had any interest in chatting with the new guy. They all knew he was only here because the Captain had decided he'd be a fun diversion, so the most reaction Sora had gotten from _anybody_ had been a, "Always playing with his pets, that sunuvabitch." From three-foot snorer himself.

Which seemed to be the capacity of social warmth around here.

 _They probably figure it's pointless getting to know you anyway. You'll likely be dead this time tomorrow_.

There wasn't even anything that could be done in the way of _training._ Not that Sora felt in the best shape to do push-ups and squats when he still had Mr. Smee's baby blue sewing thread holding his right side together.

The thought of squats made him think of Zack, which almost made Sora smile. The idea that _Zack_ , and Tidus and Selphie and all the rest of them could exist in the same world as him right now was nothing short of disconcerting, almost unreal.

 _So this is how it is. You try to sleep, you wake up, you go to the Coliseum, you try not to open your stitches and you play their game. Two men enters, one man leaves. Or maybe it's three men, or four, or ten, or…_

He felt half ready to puke, and those dogs weren't making shuteye any easier.

Sighing, he threw the scratchy wool blanket aside, sliding his legs out onto the floor, where he'd left his sneakers. No point forcing himself to get to sleep; it clearly wasn't gonna be happening any time soon.

He put on his shoes and wiped some sweat from his brow. It was always stuffy down here. Sora supposed it came from being underground. Still, the close proximity of so many _other_ warm bodies, many of whom looked like they had protein supplements in place of white blood cells, didn't make it any easier. The dorm, if that's what it truly was, stank worse than a thousand Destiny High locker rooms.

Sora crept, very carefully, down the length of the dorm, between the closely-arranged bunkbeds. Not all of them were occupied at the moment, though most of them appeared lived in, so Sora supposed there wasn't actually a penalty for being out past curfew.

 _Not for_ them _maybe, but hazing's a real bitch._

And he had no wish to have any more contact with the Captain's box of creative prostheses or, perhaps worse, get a firsthand meeting with Smee's Johnny Corkscrew.

The floor was solid granite, so Sora didn't need to worry about creaking floorboards or squeaky tiles. If he could get up at two in the morning and sneak cake from the fridge without waking his mom, what was a room full of hardened killers for sport, right?

He encountered _one_ close call on his way out the door, scuffing the toe of his shoe against an uneven doorstep, causing him to hiss sharply in pain.

There he stood, in a sort of petrified silence for a minute or two, but the only reaction was a sleepy groan from one of the occupants of a nearby bunk, a guy maybe a few years older than him, square-jawed and built like a tree trunk, with a very unflattering buzzcut.

Thankfully, he quickly returned back to sleep. Sora wasn't sure if he could have dealt with him.

 _Cocky again. You know he could've ripped you in half at the stitches._

Funny how much more he was realizing about himself in his new predicament.

Outside the dorm there was an arched passage that led to a set of carved steps leading down in a tight spiral. The Coliseum barracks were built in a sort of underground (What else is new?) silo, made of heavy gray bricks, that had apparently once stored raw, unprocessed coal. The stench of the stuff still hung in the air, raw and pungent, and the dozen or so tiny windows that had been knocked in didn't really do much for the air quality.

The barking noises echoed up the stairway, coming from what must be the very bottom of the silo. Sora was reminded of big neighborhood dogs, that barked like killers whenever a stranger walked past 'their' house. Angry, relentless, feral noises, twenty of them, maybe more, never ceasing.

Taking a tentative look down the winding stair, Sora began to head down, feeling the barking pounding in his ears, echoing so much more pronouncedly in the closed-off cylinder.

Most of the heavy streel doors on the lower levels were locked shut anyway, not that Sora was entertaining the idea of a midnight escape. Though such things as security seemed pretty relaxed around here, the Underworld itself was such a twisting maze, and apparently large parts of it were still unmapped, unfinished mine shafts with no known exits and nobody brave enough to explore them.

The doors were numbered, in big block Roman numerals: _VI, V, IV, III, II, I_ …yet the stairs kept going down, deeper even than that.

Maybe it was just Sora's imagination, doing what Kairi called 'projecting', but there seemed to be an undercurrent of something else in all the barking now. Not just anger, but a sort of desperation, begging, fear.

There was no door at the foot of the stairs, just a low arch, with the number _0_ painted over it, a gaping ovoid against the dark granite.

Sora felt a hot, dry draft whistle past him as he stepped through the arch, and into a long, low room that may once have been a storehouse and now seemed to have been converted into a sort of kennel.

About ten metal grilles were installed in the walls leading down the room, five on each side, leading into cramped cell-like enclosures. There must have been five dogs to each cell, cramped as tightly together as sardines in a can.

Sora paused, stock-still in the middle of the storeroom, feeling the attention of every one of the canines fix on him immediately, as if they knew who he was, and had lured him down here for the sole purpose of meeting him.

"Um…" Sora began, almost forgetting he was speaking, "…hey. Can't sleep either, huh?"

They were big dogs, mostly, with a few scrawnier, smaller breeds. Dobermans, pit bulls, mastiffs, terriers, all nosing at the bars of their cells, salivating on the floor as if they hadn't had a drink in days.

That may even be true, Sora supposed, with an inexplicable twinge of sadness.

He drew a little closer to the nearest kennel, behind which a handful of well-sized animals were practically throwing themselves against the bars, as if in a desperate attempt to break them, to run to him.

"Yeah, I tried that way too," Sora whispered, lowering himself to one knee before the kennel and turning his head as if to display the bruise (Whatever remained of it, he wasn't sure; first time in his life he wouldn't have minded a mirror, and there wasn't a reflective surface to be seen. Figures) he'd earned in his ill-fated escape attempt from Smee's operating theater.

"I don't recommend it, and I've got about the hardest head around."

The dogs had quieted down somewhat when he started speaking. Funny animals, dogs. Unlike cats, they seemed to actually _want_ to hear people talk to them. Marie just rolled over and went to sleep whenever Sora tried to vent.

One of them, a pale yellow mastiff, probably some sort of mix, barked sharply, nosing between the bars.

"Sucks being locked up, right?" Sora reached out a hand as if to pet it, but thought against it. He'd had his own experiences with what passed for emergency medical care down here, and he really didn't want to end up like the Captain anyway.

"I'd help you, if I knew how," he shrugged, "Kinda out of ideas right now, though."

The dog bared its teeth, not necessarily in a threatening manner, but more as if to prove it _had_ teeth. Sharp ones, too, and even yellower than his coat.

Sora laughed drily, "I'll you what, once I get _really_ desperate, I'll let you eat me. Take it easy for now, though, alright?"

"I wouldn't go around making promises like that,"

"Shit!" Sora scrambled to his feet and up against the bars as though a thousand volts had been shot through him.

He felt the dogs behind the bars nuzzling at the back of his legs, one of them even giving him a lick with a dry, papery tongue. Sora may have winced at the grossness of it all, had he not been significantly more bothered by the unexpected new arrival.

There was a figure: short, somewhat stout, standing in the shadow of a low doorway at the end of the room, that Sora hadn't noticed when he first arrived. He held a little electric lantern, casting an unexpectedly warm light around the kennels that, though somewhat disorienting at first, was oddly comforting as well.

"Getting acquainted with your competition?" asked the man, starting forward at a slow, leisurely pace, "Not the worst idea in the world."

"Um…" Sora looked back at the kennel, and the yellow mastiff in particular, who was looking up at the approaching speaker with a new attention, tongue lolling from his mouth, panting excitedly.

"I…I couldn't sleep," he said at last.

"Nobody can, the first night. I sure hope you're not here to complain about the noise. There really _is_ only so much I can do, and haven't these poor fellas suffered enough, anyway?"

He drew close enough for Sora to get a look at him, in the lantern light. Portly, with a kindly, lined face and thinning hair, though Sora couldn't quite tell how old he was.

Still, the Captain had cautioned Sora against judging by first impressions in this place, and Sora was beginning to understand the council of that. He stood his ground, crossing his arms, trying to appear both on guard and not explicitly threatening or frightened.

"Nah," he shook his head, "Doubt I'll be getting much rest anyway."

The man smiled, nodding understandingly, "No, no, I s'pose that's true." He moved past Sora to the grille, and bent down to let the yellow mastiff lick eagerly at his fingers, a task which the dog took to with gusto.

"Happy to see me, aren't ya, boy?" the man smiled, chuckling like an old grandfather.

"They're pretty hungry," Sora commented, just to see what sort of reaction he would get.

The man looked over at him, a more solemn cast coming over his face, "The hellhounds always are, that's the whole point. One meal a day under normal circumstances…but when the games come around, it's one meal for two days." He paused, "Per cage," he rapped neatly on the bars of the grille, "Gives 'em something to fight for, you see."

Sora felt his stomach twist at that, not at all helped by the exuberant expression on the mastiff's face as he licked the kennel master's hand.

He thought again of those sharp teeth, and imagined them clasping tightly around the hand, wrestling it free of its arm, and Sora shuddered.

The kennel master seemed to notice this reaction, "Dogs are funny animals, when you get right down to it." He scratched the mastiff under the chin, causing it to whine contentedly, "I raised this one from a pup, for example. Saw him whelped, kept him out of trouble the first two or three years before they decided to try him out in the pits. He's been about as good a friend to me as anyone else in this place."

He lowered his hand back to his side, setting the lantern down gently on the floor, "But I've got rules to follow. I'm told to starve him, I starve him just the same as the others. Beat him, kick him, starve him again…it wouldn't go too good on either of us if I didn't listen. I bet you've already gotten a good idea of what disobedience costs ya down here."

"Yeah…" he heard the sharp snap of his dog tag breaking off around his neck, the glint of the metal through the pained tears in his eyes, "Yeah, you could say that, I guess."

"And you know what?" the kennel master raised his eyebrows, "He doesn't much care about any of that. He cries when I kick him, but I feed him, compliment him, give him a treat, and suddenly he's my best pal again. Gives you somethin' of a rotten feeling, knowin' you can just turn him around whichever way you like, no consequences."

"Some guys get off on that," said Sora blithely, remembering with an unexpected clarity his fight with Riku in the street outside Selphie's house.

 _Crap, it feels like it happened years ago._

"Which is why we have the fighting pits to begin with." The kennel master scratched behind his ear, "Nobody likes to think about consequences, but you can't avoid them either, not if you want any chance at being a big name in the world, at making a spot for yourself. So, why not make a game where the only consequences happen down there, in the arena, and all you need to do is watch?"

"Yeah," said Sora, "I'm still not getting the appeal."

"Good boy," as if he were talking to one of his dogs, "That means you've got a heart pumping in your chest. Don't forget about it, that sorta thing becomes easy enough to do down here as it is."

Funny, now that Sora kept remembering that night with Riku and Kairi, the last time he'd ever seen her… He'd accused Riku of getting off on following Kairi around, making her feel small, scared, maybe because she wasn't interested or something, Sora couldn't really remember a lot of what he'd said that night.

If Riku was down here too, somewhere, being treated to more of this place's irreplaceable brand of hospitality…what was he thinking? Was he scared, scared as Sora had been when he'd felt the Captain yank him forward on the edge of his hook? Angry? It was easier to imagine Riku as angry, for whatever reason.

Was he thinking about Sora? Kairi? Was he feeling as guilty as he by all rights should, for getting them both embroiled in this mess?

"Sneaking out of bed?"

Sora gave a start, looking sharply from the kennel master, to find Cloud standing in the doorway, scarf stirring barely perceptibly in the hot breeze from outside.

"Evening, Strife," the kennel master nodded at him with a genial smile, as if he'd just walked in on a pleasant stroll in the park, "Sorry if I kept this fella up,' he patted Sora lightly on the shoulder, "If I could get all these rascals to catch some shut-eye at once, I would, but I'm more their servant than their master."

Cloud made a soft sound of recognition, frowning warily, "It's no problem. I'll take it from here."

The kennel master seemed to understand, smiling sympathetically as he recollected the lantern and started back down the way, "Right you are. Big day tomorrow, for both of you."

He looked down at Sora, a peculiar, but not at all upsetting, expression on his face. Like a very measured sympathy that, for one fleeting moment, had Sora thinking of his mother and Kairi's Gran all rolled up into one.

"Good luck to you," he clapped Sora on the shoulder, "And remember, son," he looked from Sora to Cloud, "You don't have to like the game to be good at playin' it. It's a hard lesson, but those of us who learned it, we're that much better off."

He seemed to be expecting Cloud to make some gesture of agreement, but Cloud simply inclined his head in a half bow so superficial that it could mean anything or nothing, just as inscrutable as the rest of him.

The kennel master paused at the low doorway he'd come in by, nodding a final goodbye, "See ya real soon," as he vanished into the shadows, the steady light of his lantern ebbing away along with his footsteps.

Alone with Cloud, Sora shifted from foot to foot, aware of the dogs to either side of them still growling and barking, though the sound seemed to have faded to white noise the longer he'd been down here.

"Come on," Cloud nodded toward the exit back to the stairwell and started off, only looking over his shoulder once to make sure Sora was following him. Sora did, not entirely upset with leaving the kennel behind, just more apprehensive than ever about what next mess awaited him.

"I'm…uh…I'm sorry I snuck out of bed," he began unevenly, as they started up the stairs, "I know I probably broke some rule and you'll have to, I dunno, cut off my pinkie or something, but I couldn't sleep. I know, I know, important to get some rest before the big game, or whatever, but…"

"If we cut off the fingers of everyone who couldn't sleep before their first match in the pits, we'd have some pretty damn embarrassing games."

Though he was obviously joking, there wasn't all that much in the way of _levity_ in Cloud's voice. Still, Sora was somewhat reassured.

"So, if I pass out during the match would they just cancel it?"

"You won't," he said it flatly, simply, as if it were a plain fact of nature, "When you're in the pit, and they raise the gate, ring the bell…you wake up. impossible not to."

Cloud stopped in his ascent, looking right down at Sora, "It's waiting for the gate to come up, waiting for everything to start, that's when it's the hardest."

Sora nodded, "Because you're thinking, trying to plan your next play, figure out what to do, how to win… then the game starts, and you get your in ass in gear, no time to think any more."

Distantly, he heard a whistle, felt the whoosh of air past his ears, heard a crowd cheering as he whistled past them all, easy as the wind.

" _You're going places kid,_ " he recalled, suddenly, wanting to laugh at the absurdity of it all. He hadn't been wrong.

"Thinking kind of sucks," he mused softly, but Cloud was studying him in a new way, almost approvingly.

"Running back," he said at last, "Am I right? Could be a punter…"

"Hell no," Sora shot back, smiling despite himself, "Right the first time. How'd you guess?"

"No guess," Cloud shrugged, "Captain's got your team dog tag hanging in his office."

"Oh." He should have figured that; without realizing it, Sora brought his hand up to his neck. He was sure whatever mark had been left by the snapping of the chain had already faded, but he at least imagined there was some raised, reddish pink line, almost like a collar, a brand, around his neck.

He imagined the dog tag hanging from the polished wood panels of that office, or maybe put in some plaque on the bookcases that hid the door. Maybe the Captain kept souvenirs form every person he 'recruited' into the Coliseum, stocking them up in that plushy, overly elegant study like an obsessive collector.

Maybe mirroring Sora's own action, Cloud made some careless motion with his hand, moving to a spot near his shoulder blade, just away from the scarf. Sora glimpsed a canary yellow feather, pinned there like some fancy boutonniere on a tuxedo jacket.

"You any good?" Cloud asked, too casually.

"Oh…um…yeah, yeah, actually," he felt a sort of embarrassed flush come into his cheeks, "Screw, modesty, right?" he added, thinking of Tidus and his stupid towel-slaps, "We…um…we almost won the division this year, actually. Would've been our first unbeaten season in…"

"Seventeen years?" and for the first time, Sora actually did see something resembling a smile on Cloud's face.

"Yeah," Sora finished, "You don't look that old."

"I'm not. It was just twelve years when I left."

 _Five years_ , Sora thought with a chill, _Five whole years_.

"You haven't been above ground in five years?"

Cloud narrowed his eyes, "Course I have; they don't just keep us down here. Not how you run a business."

The Captain had called Cloud Hades' 'go-to', Sora recalled. From all Sora knew of mobsters (though it was becoming more and more obvious that old gangster movies were perhaps too grounded, in comparison to the Underworld), that sort of phrase could mean a lot of things, and 'accomplished blood sports star' wasn't even in the top five.

"I've just been _here_ , with them, for five years. They'll let you up top too, when they need you to be. If they do."

He continued up the steps, Sora trotting to keep up as they passed doors _I_ and then _II_.

"So…" Sora continued, not wanting to fix too long on the tantalizing question of how many years he'd needed to stay locked up down here before being allowed privileges to leave to smuggle arms or kill somebody, "…think I can put my football cred to good use in the match? Maybe outrun those hellhounds?"

"Who said anything about outrunning them?" Cloud raised an eyebrow curiously, "it's a _fighting_ pit."

Somehow Sora knew he was going to say that, "So…what? Me against the dogs? That's how it works?"

"You, the dogs, one or two other guys. We try out the newer blood with the dogs first. Good test of speed, strength, stamina…"

"Smarts?" suggested Sora, thinking again of the Captain's distinctions between cleverness and cunning, and the story of Hercules and _his_ hellhound.

"Never hurts. Free for all match, three rounds. No one's asking you to kill the dogs."

"What a relief," though, and maybe he ought to have been ashamed, Sora hadn't really been agonizing over the morality of killing a rabid dog, as much as he'd been agonizing about everything else about the situation.

"You have to kill the other guys," Cloud continued, in the same impersonal voice, "If it's two, last one standing wins. If it's three, least bloodied one gets the laurels, last one standing or best out of two. We never start anyone off on four."

"How nice of you," said Sora grimly, pausing again in his ascent. Sure, he'd been somewhat dimly cognizant of the fact that he could very well, and perhaps most probably _would_ die in the games, but he'd somewhat tuned out the fact that he would probably be required to kill other people to avoid that outcome.

"So…what? Me and the other guy fight to the death and the dogs are just there to…what? Make it interesting?"

"That's the idea. The more balls you add to the court, the more fun it is to watch. Always something going on."

"Huh," Sora supposed the same could be true with normal, sane people sports. It's why he could never stand baseball. Watching it, you spend hours watching one or two people out of a group of 18 doing anything at any given time, and playing it, you stood in one spot, sweltering in the heat while someone (usually Tidus) accidentally caused minor property damage.

"So…let's say, for example..."

"Look, you may not be sleepy but I've got a match in the morning too."

"I thought no sleep was good," retorted Sora with a daring that was both surprising and somewhat reassuring to him. He was growing steadily more comfortable with his taciturn mentor, or confidant, or whatever he was.

Having either stumped Cloud or resigned him to silence, Sora continued, "For example, the dogs are about to kill me and the other guy. Like, we're cornered, and we could both get our guts ripped out, or whatever, if we don't do something fast…" he nodded significantly to gauge if Cloud was listening. His expression remained unchanged, which Sora took as an affirmative.

"…so the guy and I, we like, team up, yanno, 'cause we're both desperate and we know we're both gonna die if we don't do something. Like, maybe one of us goes right and I go left, to split the dogs up, or we feint, or some trick like that. That'd work, right?"

"Probably. Then if the other guy's smart, he'd crack your skull in before you'd finished congratulating him."

Sora stopped short, looking side eye at Cloud, "Well…yeah, I guess…I guess that could happen."

"Oldest trick in the book," Cloud said it knowingly enough that Sora didn't doubt he knew from experience, "Don't partner up with someone unless you trust them totally. You're new. So don't trust anyone."

"Not even you?"

Cloud narrowed his eyes, "I wouldn't recommend it." He continued up the stairs, "And the Captain's not such a big fan of that trick."

"What, too predictable?"

Cloud made a dry scoffing sound, adjusting the feather in his lapel, "Try asking him how he lost his hand. Probably your surest ticket out of this place."

And Sora knew better than to press any further on that score. He continued on, after Cloud, up the stairs to the bunker, suddenly finding that he _was_ getting kind of tired with each extra step.

Yet whether some rest was a good thing, or a death sentence, Sora still couldn't be sure.

* * *

Seifer drove with all the exaggerated swagger and machismo of a bachelor entrenched in a midlife crisis, but somehow with even less self-awareness.

"She's a beaut, ain't she?" he asked Squall with a careless tilt of his head, one hand lazily manipulating the leather-padded wheel and the other draped with a frankly stupid leisureliness over the side of the car.

He seemed much more composed now that he'd gotten Squall away from potential eavesdroppers. The roof of this ridiculous sleek sports car had been lowered, as if to provide the benefit of an evening breeze, despite the fact they were driving along a one-lane subterranean mineshaft-turned roadway.

"Bit too beautiful for you," Squall quipped, adjusting one of the studs in his ear with a purposeful precision, "Who'd you have to screw over?"

"Now, when have _I_ ever screwed over anyone?" he gave him another one of those accusatory looks, "I've got friends down here, Leon."

"That doesn't sound any less sketchy the fifth time you say it."

Seifer laughed, "Yanno, Leon, I ain't gonna pretend to know how you hardass boys in blue operate, but _maybe_ , just _maybe_ , you wanna be a little more respectful around your only friend in this place."

He smirked, "You need me."

Squall didn't really. This whole thing would have been much, much easier if Seifer hadn't turned up out of nowhere to turn this entire plan on his head. Nobody in the Underworld would be very likely of recognizing a former cop whose only legacy to this place was a drug bust from nine years ago, especially not if he kept his head down and avoided any old timers…

But Seifer had always been nothing if not a spanner in the works, already ready to throw all the most carefully calibrated schemes into flux. Squall would have to put up with him now, he was too dangerous to let out of his sight, now that he knew…

And, perhaps, their meeting here was some small sort of fortuitous.

"I thought there was still bad blood between the Earthshakers and the Styx and Stones?" Squall asked as Seifer took another turn into a somewhat wider, more trafficked tunnel, where other vehicles of different sizes and maintenance trundled this way and that.

"You never hear of diplomatcy?"

"Can't say I have."

Seifer didn't seem to pick up on the jab, "It's called 'trailblazing', Leon. End to hostilities, no more fighting, a new chapter. You know how many Wind Makers get their dumb asses killed tryin' pull raids on this place?"

"A lot," Squall tried to mask his irritation, though Seifer probably knew more about the exact figure of gang members killed in the Underworld than the DPD could ever hope to. Hades covered his tracks so well, you'd be forgiven for thinking he actually was as implacable as death itself.

"Cocky little shits, all of them. Too proud to know when it's time to roll over." Seifer clicked his tongue against his front teeth, "I take care of my people, Leon. None of my crew's gonna get killed fighting a war they can't win."

He let the words hang in the air, as if he expected Squall to be moved to gentle, tender tears by his noble and virtuous deeds. Squall chose to neither indulge or antagonize. He would _not_ be the first of them to broach the subject, no matter how much Seifer seemed to want him to.

"So, does the rest of your crew know about your diplomatic mission or is this all some very expensive secret?" he tapped his finger lightly against the polished faux-wood paneling of the glovebox, in which was inset a clock, a compass, and what appeared to be a vertical ashtray.

"If you're askin' whether Riku would know about any of this…" Seifer looked over at Squall, decisively, "No, and there's no way he coulda found out either. I'm keepin' this whole thing under wraps for now."

"So, his friend, Axel, he couldn't have…"

"Axel?" Seifer made some noise of contempt in his throat, though it sounded more like he was choking on the name, "If I didn't tell Riku, no way I'm telling _him_. He's like a damn kid, can't control himself. I'd kick him out, but he'd probably get himself killed out on his own. Guy's clueless."

"Yeah, he doesn't like you very much." Offered Squall casually.

Seifer snorted, "What, was he bitching about me in lockup?"

"Well, he bitched about a lot of things, but yeah."

"S'what I get, y'see, for trying to be a nice guy, a fair leader, a friend to my men." he spat carelessly over the side of the car, causing the driver of a passing off-road vehicle to cuss loudly.

Seifer flipped him the bird as casually as anything, continuing, "I coulda kicked him out the second I heard he had a buddy crossing over to the other side, but I didn't, and he hates me anyway. You just can't win with people, eh, Leon?"

"Guess you can't," with a bit of unnecessary emphasis on 'you', "If it's any consolation, Axel and his friend don't have much to do with each other anymore."

He thought again of Saix's casual shrug, his almost too-solemn disaffection for Axel, his warnings. Saix never really spoke more about Axel than was necessary, yet even so, everybody at the DPD knew _something_ of their friendship, of Saix's all too brief stint in the Twilight chapter of the Earthshakers, his sudden career shift, and their subsequent falling out.

Perhaps not as dramatic as the stories the Earthshakers presumably told about Squall and Seifer, but it was something.

As if he'd been reading his mind, Seifer quipped, "Nothin' kills a friendship faster than a badge, eh?"

"I can think of a few other things."

Seifer chuckled drily, turning again, now onto a slight decline in the tunnel, toward a cinderblock archway looking into what must have been some kind of underground parking lot.

"Your summer place?" Squall wondered.

"Piss off," said Seifer congenially enough, slowing the car down at a metal gate that had been lowered over the arch and gesturing impatiently beyond it, as if to signal to somebody, "Now, shut up and look wise. I've got a reputation to uphold."

Squall held his tongue and watched as the gate was raised with an ear-grating screech of metal against metal.

"Git it going, donkey dookie," Seifer called to the approaching figure from the other side of the gate, "Right time of night don't last forever!"

"Right time of night for _someone_ , maybe," muttered the gateman, a tall, spindly man in a velvet uniform that looked a tetch too classy for this dingy, underground establishment, "Nice of you to stop by, all the same. The house could do with some repairs. Central heating, for one thing, I'm freezing my stones off in this hole."

"Deepest sympathies, but you'll have to get by on someone else's charity. I feel like winnin' tonight."

The gateman looked over at Squall, as if noticing him for the first time, "Oh, yeah? What's this guy? Secret weapon, or did ya need some help to count cards?"

Seifer raised his eyebrows as if offended before thudding Squall lightly on the collarbone, bursting into peals of laughter. Squall, getting the idea, laughed along, in fits and starts.

"Nah," Seifer shook his head, "Out of towner, thought I'd show him the sights around town before he ships back out again. No visit to the Land Down Under's complete without…"

"…losin' all your money, that's the idea," sniffed the gateman dismissively, stepping aside to wave the car through, "Have fun, boys. Don't forget to tip. I'd like to retire before I'm a hundred and seven."

"Memory's getting fuzzy already!" Seifer called back, stopping the car and stepping out as a shorter, stouter man in a similar uniform tottered from a cramped office in the corner of the lot, "Come on, Lee, clock's ticking and my game fills up the fastest."

Squall followed him out of the car, taking one cursory look back at it as the shorter usher got behind the wheel, presumably to guide it to a parking spot somewhere in this cavern.

" _Lee_?" he whispered out of the corner of his mouth as he and Seifer started across the lot.

"We could've compromised on a name before, but you were too busy quizzing me on Earthshakers past and present." He nudged Squall in the side, as if they were just old buddies out for a night on the town, as he's claimed, "'Sides, those two goons ain't gonna recognize ya from anywhere. One of them's half-blind, and the other one's more than half stupid."

"This is that casino," Squall didn't phrase it as a question, "Elysian Fields."

"Yanno, I've always missed our meaningful conversations."

"So, does losing here all the time count as diplomacy too, or do you just have a problem?"

"You win some, you lose some. I've got a pretty banging record. "

Seifer paused outside an elevator in polished black marble. The brass plaque next to the doors reaffirmed ' _All Upper Floors_ ', quite unnecessarily.

Squall sighed as Seifer called the elevator, "Why are we here?"

"You wanted my help, I agreed," Seifer shrugged, "But I _did_ have plans for my Saturday night before you decided to jump me."

"So we're gonna win back the money you blew on call girls?"

Seifer snorted, "Trouble with you is, man, you think you know everything."

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure you were just meeting with Ursula for tea and cookies. A guy like you doesn't need to pay for a date."

"Damn right I don't," he said in a somewhat cooler voice as the elevator doors opened and they entered, "A man like me, he has business everywhere."

Seifer pressed the button with a large letter _C_ inlaid on it in worn gold-leaf, sending the elevator up with a little jolt.

"'Sides, safer to talk in a big place with lots of people; no one's gonna hear ya," he looked at Squall, "You oughta know that."

Squall did, but he wasn't; about to give Seifer any more undue credit. The Elysian Fields Hotel and Casino was a widely known public front for Hades and the Styx and Stones. It had been brought up under inquiry and investigation more times than Squall could count, yet the number of times admissible evidence had been discovered he could've counted on one hand.

The elevator came to a smooth stop on a floor where the chute was mirrored, offering Squall a 360 degree view of the main casino floor. Columns in black and white marble stretched up to a garishly vaulted tin ceiling, in which were carved assorted scenes from Classical Mythology, too high up for Squall to make out clearly.

Card tables and slot machines were scattered around the floor, with little rhyme nor reason, almost all of them occupied by finely dressed men and women, some smoking, some drinking cocktails. On a mezzanine level above the main floor, Squall could dimly make out the tables and chairs of the restaurant.

"We don't exactly blend in with this crowd," Squall observed as the doors opened and he and Seifer stepped out onto the floor.

"Maybe not," Seifer looked around with an approving smirk, "But you fit in with _me_ , and that counts for something."

He patted Squall squarely on the shoulder, starting off across the floor, "You still got the magic touch for Hearts, or are games of chance frowned upon over on the 'right' side of the law?"

 _Hearts. He's just out to torture me tonight._

Squall could remember all too vividly those many summer nights, sitting up at the Overlook outside of Destiny, bikes parked in the little dirt paddock a few steps down the hill, while they sat in the shade of tall elms and twisty, greyish-black poplar trees, four of them on a faded Navajo weave blanket (probably imitation, but Ri had always had an affinity for the indigenous, no matter how fake), dealing and passing cards with an almost inhuman rapidity.

Hearts had always been his game, but Ri had loved it too.

" _It's better than poker!_ " she would laugh excitedly as she threw a Queen of Spades down onto the mat, delighting in the defeated groans of whichever of them was unlucky enough to have played the highest card, " _Teaches you how to read somebody_ and _it makes you think._ "

"Sometimes, I swear, I thought you were psychic." Seifer told him as they crossed the garishly patterned carpet to the Hearts table, "I'm older and wiser now, though. You were just damn good at bluffing."

"And you were damn good at thinking you were bluffing," Squall retorted, though really you didn't need to bluff to be good at Hearts. You just needed to affect an air of confidence, of infallibility. Never appear to know too much or too little. They would never stop looking at you, but they'd never suspect you half as much as they would if you were trying to look 'innocent'.

Sort of like training to be undercover, really. The method had worked just fine for him back then, too.

There were two men already sitting at the table when the two Earthshakers past and present drew up close.

"Ah, here's two likely lads!" the older one of them announced approvingly, speaking with a pursed perfunction around the Cherrywood pipe in his mouth, "We needed another two for a game."

"Well, you're in luck," Seifer swept grandly into the third chair, next to the man's burlier companion, "Or maybe we are."

The first man chortled at the bravado, his companion smirking, "Excellent. Maybe when Clayton and I have relieved you of your pocket change you can direct us to your jewelry store. My fiancée's in the market for a new set of earrings."

Seifer grimaced, "Look at that, Lee, this one thinks he can trash talk us into submission." He snapped his fingers over at the card girl on duty, one of the many masked young women in the patchwork patterned dresses milling around on the floor, "She'll be in the market for a new financier when we're finished with you."

The older man, Clayton, laughed again, muttering something that sounded vaguely like, "Peace, peace!"

"What is the point of all this?" Squall asked quietly, putting a hand on Seifer's shoulder before he could launch himself across the table and assault one of the dandies.

"What, you forgot how to trash talk? It's how you play the game, psych out your opponent."

"Why are we _here_ , playing cards? You said you would answer my questions…"

"Would you rather I bought you dinner first? You know how expensive this place is?" he snapped over at the card girl again, who was crossing the room to them in quick, short steps, having apparently just finished some discussion with one of her colleagues.

She slowed down a little as she neared, and Squall could make out the design on her mask: a series of black symbols, almost like cave drawings, on a greenish-blue background.

"We can't really have much of a conversation anyway with these two breathing down our necks." He nodded surreptitiously at Clayton and his companion, at which Seifer snorted.

"These two chicken wusses ain't gonna be long for this world," he winked, "It's been a while, but I ain't forgotten how good you are this game."

" _There_ you are, my dear!" Clayton nodded at the woman, shaking his pipe at her like a jolly old uncle chastising his niece, "Come, come, I daresay you've never met a group of gents so willing to part with their wallets."

"I more than daresay if you walk like that everywhere," the other man said with a garish smile, "Come on, loosen up, sweetie, put some spring in your step."

It was true, Squall noticed, that the card girl was more than a little reticent about approaching them, looking unsteady on her feet, walking stiff as a board, like a little kid about to deliver a speech in front of the rest of her class. Perhaps she was new at her job.

"Hey, watch your mouth," said Seifer, "You talk to your girlfriend that way, punk?"

"Never any need," the man turned back to the card girl, "Come on, honey, Gaston doesn't have all night."

"Who's Gaston? You got a guy waitin' in the wings for ya?"

The man's eyes glimmered dangerously, though the cool, yet predatory smile never left his face, " _I'm_ Gaston."

"Well, in that case, you say _I_ don't got all night. Talk English, ditchweed?"

"Settle down," Squall tugged Seifer back down to his seat, grabbing him by the collar of his coat, "I didn't sign up to be your babysitter."

Clayton chortled again, thick, white smoke curling up from the bowl of his pipe, to dissipate to nothing just beneath the ornate tin ceiling, "We've got our hands full with these fellows, eh, my friend?" he leaned past Gaston to grin at Squall, "I deeply sympathize."

"Thanks," Squall told him flatly, looking back up to the card girl, who had paused across the table, her hands gripping the edge maybe a little more firmly than was necessary. Maybe it was Squall's imagination, but she seemed almost petrified, stricken. Though she wasn't looking at Gaston, who had insulted her, or at Seifer who had, however clumsily, defended her, but at _him_.

 _This place isn't the same as the Underworld_ , Squall reminded himself, feeling a barely perceptible prickle, almost like goosebumps, over his scar, _It's aboveground, and anyone can go in and out. Anyone can recognize you._

But who _would_? Certainly not some random cardsharp. Squall doubted the staff at Elysian Fields were allowed to get out much.

"If…if you're all settled, gentlemen," the girl began in an oddly strained voice, perhaps muffled by her mask, "I can start dealing. You'll be playing a proper round game?"

"I should think so," said Clayton, "In this company, we'll have no lack of competition, that seems clear enough." He looked over at Squall and Seifer, thin, gingery eyebrow cocked in an almost mocking expression of curiosity, "Unless you chaps have any objections?"

"Fine by me," Seifer shrugged, "I never shirk the chance to teach a man a lesson."

The card girl nodded and began fumbling with the deck of cards, shuffling them decently enough, though her hands seemed to be shaking.

"You know the rules, of course?" the girl seemed almost terrified they wouldn't; Squall wondered if she would even know to explain them if she had to.

"We each deal a card each trick," Squall explained for her, "Whoever deals the highest card has to take all four. Hearts count as one penalty each, and the Queen of Spades is 13. Can't deal a heart 'till someone breaks on another suit. First guy to exhaust his cards wins the pot."

Gaston sniffed in mild dissatisfaction, though the card girl nodded with a sigh, "That's quite correct, yes." As she began dealing, six cards to each of them.

"For the sake of restoring some politeness," Clayton continued, "May I ask what brings you fellows this way tonight? Gaston and I have been staying here three days now, yet I don't wager I've seen you lads before."

"Not stayin' at the hotel," answered Seifer before Squall could say anything, "You could call us regulars."

"I'd figured as much," said Gaston, with another lingering look at Seifer's cross-earrings, but the barb seemed to go over Seifer's head, thankfully enough.

"Ah, I'd been wondering if perhaps you were here for the big games," Clayton shrugged, "I've been setting up a pool with some other fellows from our floor. Upwards of four grand in play, now, if you're interested."

"I don't think you're supposed to go about chatting about them to just anyone," Gaston chided.

Seifer, however, had tensed noticeably at the mention of the games. Squall could tell by his adamant refusal to look back at him, that he'd been really hoping Squall never catch any wind on this subject.

"Let's focus on this game first, whaddaya say?" said Seifer easily, nodding over at Squall, "You pass first."

That was true enough. Squall _was_ sitting to the left of the dealer. With a sharp look at Seifer, he looked down at the cards he'd been dealt, selecting an ace of diamonds, a Queen of Clubs and an ace of spades (a virtual death sentence to anyone who held it) to pass to Seifer, who in turn passed three of his cards to Gaston, who passed three to Clayton, who passed three to Squall.

 _King of Spades, Jack of Clubs, 10 of Hearts._ Not a bad play. Clayton seemed to know what he was doing at least.

 _The games. The big games…_ Squall didn't have to reach too far to recall the Underworld's legacy of big games, and he knew Seifer didn't have to either.

But that was all supposed to be over, all of it, all since…

"Two of clubs deals first," said the card girl, as if happy to remember the rule.

"That he does," and Seifer slid the card along the red felt of the table.

The rest of them joined their cards to the trick. Gaston with a seven of clubs, Clayton with a four, and Squall, who had no clubs, with the King of Spades Clayton had given him.

"Next trick to the gentleman here," the girl announced, nodding at Squall, as she collected the four dealt cards, "Score is zero all around."

"Give 'em hell, Lee," said Seifer as Squall returned his attention to his cards

"I plan to," but his gaze never left Seifer, as he dealt the nine of diamonds.

He was kept from paying close attention to what the others did in reaction as he felt a separate rectangle of cardboard being slid under his folded arm.

He looked sharply up at the card girl, who shook her head in a quick nod, as if a warning to stay quiet.

The penalty for cheating was hard enough at most conventional casinos; Squall didn't like to think what they did to cheaters at Elysian Fields, or to the girls that helped them.

As Clayton chortled about dealing the highest card of the trick, Squall turned his arm back to examine the card the girl had dealt him. It was one of the four clubs from the first trick, the four, on which the girl had written, in a spindly yet neat pencil, ' _THE GAMES_ ,'

"Aha!" Squall almost jumped from his seat, but it was just Clayton grandly throwing the three of diamonds onto the table.

In the movement of the next trick, Squall felt another card slide under his arm. He accepted it readily, turning it around to read the message, ' _TOMORROW_., boldly written across the seven clubs.

"This game's dead as dishwater," declared Gaston, who had accepted the last trick, "I'd have a better time eating paint."

"Squall felt the third card slide over to him. He flipped it over so fast he was surprised no one saw him.

The King of Spades, with the message ' _THEY'LL KILL CELESTE'S BOY._ '

"Enjoy your paint," Seifer told Gaston, "I'm having a great time," as he threw a six of hearts onto the table, "Hearts broken. Let's liven up this joint."

Squall, without even realizing it, had played the Jack of Clubs that trick, ended up accepting the one penalty point for Seifer's heart.

"Let's," said Squall, dealing the Queen of Spades and taking a momentary grim satisfaction, in Seifer's groan of dismay as he dealt the Ace of Spades.

"Penalty is 13," said the card girl with an anxious look back to Squall, a sort of understanding in her eyes.

"This is where I step out, actually," announced Squall, getting to his feet and dragging Seifer up to stand next to him.

"Taking your soul mate with you?" asked Gaston, "Good idea, he seems to have gotten in way over his head."

"You don't have to tell me. You two enjoy your games."

"Oh, we will!" Clayton waved them off, "Perhaps we'll see you again. This place isn't nearly so big as it looks."

"Sure isn't." and Squall strode out of their earshot, with one last look back at the masked card girl, who had helped him more in ten minutes than Seifer had in two hours.

"The hell was hat for?" Seifer demanded as they started toward the elevator, "I thought you were trying to keep a low profile, what was that supposed to do for anybody?"

"That's a damn good question," Squall called the elevator, suddenly feeling as though he were being watched, like every eye on the casino floor was watching him, "You've just been wasting my time all night, haven't you? Biding your time, maybe, waiting for the right chance to stab me in the back…"

"Look, Leon…"

"Don't call me that."

"…Do we really need to go over this again, 'cause _I_ ain't the backstabber here."

The elevator opened and Squall ushered Seifer inside, pressing the button for the parking level, "Of course you're not, how could I have forgotten? _I'm_ the backstabber, I'm the traitor, you're just an upstanding, moral citizen, looking out for his own people, protecting them, sheltering them, a father to his men, that's it, right?"

"Yeah, you know what, Leon, it…"

Squall slammed his finger against the elevator's emergency brake at the same time as he slammed Seifer against the wall, just as they'd been in the corridor outside the Grotto. The elevator car came to a screeching halt midway down the shaft, the dusky orange glow of the lights flickering in and out as Seifer struggled against Squall again, his hand going to where he'd hidden his second knife.

Squall grabbed for the reaching hand, squeezing Seifer's wrist in a vice grip, "Were you gonna tell me the Coliseum reopened?"

"I…" Seifer grunted, "…Leon, for fuck's sake, what are…"

" _Were you_?"

"It's not like _I_ reopened it!" Seifer spat at him, his eyes blazing, "I hate that place as much as you do, Leon…"

"Call me that again, and I cut your throat," and, before he knew what he was doing, Leon had the first knife, the one he's stolen from Seifer earlier in the evening, pressed up beneath Seifer's jaw, "Yeah, you know, I'm sure you really do hate the Coliseum. you probably hate this place too, and the Grotto, and every other goddamn hole in this cesspool, but you stick around, you order girls from Ursula, you gamble all your money away to the Styx and Stones, you sell people to the Coliseum to fight and die like _animals_ all to protect your people, right? It's all in the name of diplomacy."

Seifer pushed back against him, sending them both crashing to the cold, marble floor of the elevator. He reached for the knife in Squall's splayed hand, as Squall struggled to get out from under him, seeing the hilt of his second knife poking out over the edge of his belt.

"I never sold anyone to the Coliseum, get it through your head," he spoke through strained words, and Squall could feel his hand shaking as he recollected his knife, "The hell could I, after what happened to Ri?"

Squall kneed him in the gut, pushing back against him so they were both on the ground in the corner, Squall pinning him there, the knives both forgotten, though the rage pumping through him was such that he didn't doubt he could snap Seifer's neck if he wanted to.

"You don't get to say that name either," he said softly, dangerously, "Not when you killed her."

"Me?" Seifer made a choked sound that might have been a laugh as the lights flickered again, getting dimmer and dimmer, " _That_ what you've been telling yourself all these years?"

"She'd still be alive if you had let her go, don't even try to spin this. She thought…" he swallowed, feeling a stabbing twist in his stomach, "…she thought she could _save_ you, and you let her think that and now she's dead instead of you…"

"She _loved_ me!" there was an angry flush in Seifer's face, and his eyes were blazing and watering all at once, "That's why she stayed. Because she was _loyal_."

"You don't even know what that word means. If you gave a damn about Rinoa, about her memory," he paused, taking a breath to compose himself, "you would've quit this whole game after she died. The Underworld, Hades, the Earthshakers, all of it. _That's_ why she died, and here you are making sure those traditions stay strong…"

"I couldn't just _leave_." Seifer told him, "You get too deep, and you can never get out. I'm making the most of it. I take care of my people, _Leon_ ," he pronounced the name with a cool deliberation, as if seeing just what Squall would do, "And that's what Rinoa wanted too."

"Oh?" Squall nodded slowly, cupping his hand around the back of Seifer's neck, drawing his face closer to his own, so he could smell the sharp, sour tang of his breath, "Is that what you call kidnapping one of your own and bringing them down here to die like Rinoa did?"

Seifer went pale, tensing in Squall's grip, "I…I don't…"

"That souped up Bentley of yours," Squall continued, "Great move showing it to me, by the way, saved me a lot of work. Same plate numbers as one of the cars from the tunnel, last known location of your little man Riku and his little pal Sora."

Sensing Seifer's look of amazed bewilderment, Squall added, "Friend of mine's really good with stats like that. I've just got a really good memory."

Seifer slacked in Squall's grip, and he knew he'd caught him.

"You took them? One of them, at least."

"It…it was supposed to be Riku," Seifer said at last in a somewhat different voice, "Axel showed up, wanted me to hand Riku's bike back over to him, so…so I knew he was planning something."

"And you went off to catch him before he got away, and one other kid too, an unexpected surprise. A nice little present for Hades, maybe an early Christmas bonus, is that it? You'd already brought him five or six pretty young girls, why not spice things up a little, right?"

"Hades never got those girls from me, if he even has 'em. He just wanted Riku..."

"Riku, your own little Earthshaker, accused of a crime he didn't commit," because, Squall had to rationalize Riku's guilt was only shrinking as Seifer's grew. Yuffie would be relieved.

"And you chased him down as he tried to get away, and you took him down here to God knows what," Squall shook his head, laughing a more genuine laugh than he'd felt in a long time, "Honor among thieves, my ass. You're just as full of shit as you always were, only looking out for yourself."

"Fine!" Seifer cried, "Fine, I was supposed to take Riku. And I would have, but someone else got to him first."

"The second car," Squall offered, and Seifer nodded.

"Don't ask me who it was or who was driving, I don't know. They started shooting, took Riku and drove off…"

"Leaving you with Sora."

"Whatever his name is. He was shot, so I couldn't leave him there…"

"What a Good Samaritan you are." Squall reached into his pocket and took out the King of Spades, showing him the message the card girl had written across it.

"Who's Celeste?"

"Sora's mother. I only met her once, but that's all it takes to know her life _is_ that kid. Rinoa had a mother too, you know. I still get Christmas cards from her. She still can't say her daughter's name without crying. You sent that innocent kid down here, with a bullet wound if you're not lying, to die in that place just like Rinoa and you have the _nerve_ to say you're doing what she would have wanted?"

"Look, I didn't know what they were going to do with him!" Seifer cried out, as the lights flickered out for good, plunging them both into darkness, "If he's in the Coliseum, don't blame me!"

"They're going to kill him." Squall repeated, "I don't know why 'they' are, or why they want him dead, but they're gonna kill him, because of you."

"You can say all you want about me, Leon," there was a strained tightness to Seifer's voice, "I didn't mean the kid any harm. Hell, even with Riku…if I hadn't, it would have been worse…"

"For you?

"For the rest of us. Just like with Ri. I didn't want Ri to die, I had no choice…"

"Huh," Squall didn't really feel about beating around that point again. It occurred to him that they'd been stopped here long enough to perhaps make some people suspicious, "Well, you have a choice now."

"What choice?" Seifer staggered to his feet as Squall released him, rubbing at his Adam's apple and grimacing.

"You can help me save Sora," Squall explained, "Or I can kill you, right here, right now." He cocked his head to the side, "You think you know what Rinoa would have wanted? Prove it."

Seifer glowered at him, running his hand through tousled hair, "It doesn't feel like much of a choice."

"Neither was Rinoa's. We really gonna stand here arguing about this?"

So Seifer sighed, letting his arms go slack to his sides, "You'll get us both killed."

"Maybe," Squall slammed the brake again, starting the elevator back down the shaft as the lights flickered back to life, "It's long overdue."

He wasn't sure whether Seifer was scowling or smirking at him the rest of the way down to the bottom.

For one sick, confused moment, Squall found himself thinking, _Just like old times._

* * *

 _Second times the charm,_ Riku found himself thinking as he again approached the cavernous entry of the Grotto, home of Heaven's Most Beautiful Souls and, apparently, also leasing space to Earth's Most Dependably Undependable Douchebags.

Riku had been put off enough by the sudden appearance of Squall Leonhart at the entrance to the place. Fair enough to assume, he supposed, that Leonhart was down here for him. Riku had mostly put the catastrophe on the highway out of his head, but when he came to think of it, that sort of chaos couldn't very well have passed unnoticed, even by the most conventional of cops.

He'd entertained the idea of speaking up, making himself known to Leonhart. Sure, the guy had a beef with the Earthshakers, but from all Riku had gathered, he was far from undependable. He'd hear Riku out, not just ship him back to his cell at the DPD. After all, this wasn't exactly a job for one…

And yet, before Riku had even decided whether or not it was a good idea to creep out from hiding, blend with the clusters of guests going in and out, and enter the Grotto himself, his quarry had come out again, this time accompanied by his alleged worst enemy.

 _Seifer?_ Riku had dropped back behind the heap of unsmelted gravel he'd chosen as a new hiding spot, his heart racing at the sight of the self-elected leader of the Earthshakers, Destiny chapter.

It was him, all right, just as smug and self-assured as Riku had always known him to be, if a little roughed up. He and Leonhart had walked with a purposeful cordiality across the front lot, not speaking with each other, but with an air of such deliberate casualness that Riku knew at once something was up. They hadn't expected to find each other down here, and now they were both doing their best to keep themselves together.

He had lingered behind the gravel heap long enough to see the receding taillights of a Bentley heading down the tunnel. A very familiar Bentley, in point of fact. Riku felt his shoulders tense as the quiet hum of the engine faded into the dark, echoing back to the grotto entrance like a badly out of tune drum set.

 _It can't be. Not Seifer, not even_ he's _that evil, he's just an asshole, and not even a very smart asshole at that._

Most of the Styx and Stones drove Bentleys; Riku had seen more than a few of them parked in this lot alone. Just the fact that _Seifer_ , of all people, had one, one that he apparently only used down _here_ , doing God knows what…

Riku resolved, at that point, to just get it all over with and do what he'd come here for. Whatever was going on between the stoic police detective and the bombastic gang leader was clearly connected in some way to the very tongue-in-cheek named brothel Riku had been by chance deposited in front of.

No point beating around the bush anymore, or else he may as well have just revealed himself to Seifer and Leonhart when he had the chance.

Riku took care to make himself moderately more presentable before he entered, though. Luckily, there had been a sort of makeshift wash shed, complete with a leaky sink and a basin vaguely resembling a toilet, just a few steps from the Grotto's entrance, either a relic leftover from the coal mine days or a clever innovation for saps just like him wanting to be let inside for a few hours of fun.

He'd washed the dust and grime of the road form his face, and out from his clothes (though to wash it all out with _this_ water was too monumental a task to even contemplate), and even wrung out the bandanna he must wear over his hair, however stupid he felt in it.

"Here goes everything," he muttered to the cracked looking glass above the basin tightening the bandana back over his hair.

The crowds of the evening seemed to be thinning out as Riku passed through the charmingly claustrophobia-inducing entrance corridor. Riku had already observed Dopey's four rowdy companions tottering unsteadily back out of the cave, laughing about what may have happened to the two they'd left behind back at the junk pit.

Shame. Riku would have appreciated a few more people, the better to blend in with the crowd.

He passed into the main lounge, eyes burning at once as the harsh smell of incense and perfume met his nostrils. A harpsichord was playing somewhere, behind one of the many beaded curtains draped over niches in the walls of the cave, though Riku couldn't quite get the clear schematics of this place, obscured by harsh red and violet light and thick smoke as it was.

"I'd close my trap if I were you," a woman told him in a throaty voice, "Trust me, the air down here doesn't taste as good as it smells."

Riku turned around to look down at the speaker, an older woman in a black and purple evening gown, sporting seashell jewelry on every available part of her.

"First time, handsome?" she cocked her head to the side, a fat finger tenderly stroking the corner of her deeply rouged lips, "It's okay to be nervous."

Riku averted his eyes briefly, embarrassed, catching his breath, "Um…no," he lied, "I mean, yeah. Yeah, I haven't. Um…I haven't been here before. But it's not my…"

"Of course it isn't," the woman picked a sleek brass-finished pen from the table she was sitting at, working it delicately between her fingers as if trying very unsubtly to impart a message.

"The Grotto serves all kinds," she continued, "No need to be nervous. Tell me, honey, what your dreams are made of."

"My dreams," Riku repeated, "I'm…uh…I don't think I've ever thought about it."

The woman tut-tutted, leaning over the desk to look understandingly at him, like a pre-school teacher trying with everlasting patience to explain something to a toddler. It was unsettling, almost like she _knew_ , though what she could know Riku wasn't sure.

"Your fantasy, handsome. That's our mission here, don't ya know? No one comes to a place like mine looking for some real life, honest to goodness answer to all their worries. What does that even _mean_ anyway?" she tossed her head back and laughed, silver-streaked ringlets swooping dangerously close to a lit gas lamp as she did so.

"No, no…we're in the business of dreams here, of fantasies. What's yours, handsome? What helps you get to sleep at night? What little forbidden dreams drove you all the way here to me?"

Maybe it was the incense in the air, the drowsy, torpid effect it seemed to have the longer you inhaled it, but the woman's (Madame's? Riku supposed that was what this woman counted as, if she was anything at all) voice seemed to have taken on a trance-like quality. It seemed as though Riku was barely even there, with her, at all.

" _You can't just take everything you want,_ " he heard Kairi's voice in his ear, " _The world isn't just_ you _!_ "

As if he didn't know.

"Dreams?" Riku nodded, trying to keep cool, trying to seem like nothing more than an ordinarily nervous teenage boy at his first ever bordello. Somehow, ordinary nerves were much more difficult to master than…whatever _these_ nerves, were.

He didn't want to think of dreams, not anymore. Not when they'd already caused him so much trouble.

Tag in the street, under a hot midsummer sun. kids laughing, running and jumping and ducking around the neighborhood as if it were some sort of vast playground, some wonderland that only they could see.

One boy, so scrawny he looked younger than some of the other kids, though that wasn't so, lurking on the sidelines, watching, hoping, dreaming one of the others would ask him to join, would see him, would realize he was there, that he had joined them, that he was lost on the sidelines, unsure of whether to step forward, speak up or just slink back home, down the street, up the fire escape and back into his apartment as if he'd never left.

" _The world isn't just_ you _._ "

Though it had been, back then. And he'd hated it. Perhaps it still was, and Riku just didn't realize it anymore.

"Look, poopsie, this self-discovery thing is all well and good, but I _do_ have a business to run, and the night won't stay night forever."

Snapped back to reality, Riku cleared his throat, reminding himself of why, exactly, he was here, "Redheads. I kind of…I kind of have this…this recurring dream, I guess. Redheads. Blue eyes."

The Madame raised her eyebrows with a nod, "You're not the only one." She toyed with the shell hanging from her neck, a brass conch shape on a beaded chain, "I guess there's something to be said for just the right mix of exotic and innocent, yes?"

"Yeah," he nodded, "Yeah, there…there is."

She beamed, "I think I have just the dolly for you. New to the family, and not long for us, I'm afraid. I've already promised her to another, if you know what I mean," she shrugged, "But she's mine for the next however long, and yours too, for tonight, if you want her. If you can."

Riku almost double-taked. He hadn't actually been expecting that much in the way of an answer.

 _She's here. Kairi's here, they made her one of the Beautiful Souls, or whatever they're called_ , he felt a deep sinking in the pit of his stomach.

What had he done? If he had just left well enough alone, Kairi would never have needed to follow him that night, just like Sora would never have needed to keep him from getting away, and neither of them would be in any danger, just as separate from Riku and his life as they were always meant to be.

But he could save her now, and maybe Sora too.

"I can," said Riku, maybe too quickly, "Definitely, I can definitely pay…"

Silently, he thanked his foresight in raiding that footlocker full of cash back at the junk heap.

"Hold your horses, bucko," laughed the Madame, "We're talking about a precious, living, breathing human being, not haggling over some old pick-up truck."

"No haggling, then," said Riku in a somewhat more measured voice, "Name your price."

She chuckled, "Oh, to be young again. Or maybe not." She took the pen again, reaching for a stationary pad nearby, on which she began to write in sweeping, loopy cursive, "With age comes experience, yes, handsome?"

She turned the pad back over to Riku, who blinked at the number, trying to figure out how he was supposed to react. Having never had any experience with places like this, he couldn't tell whether this price was a steal or highway robbery, though he could tell the Madame was expecting him to say _something_ about it.

"I…I can do that."

"Ha!" the Madame laughed, more like cackled, "I like you, handsome. No nonsense, no frills. The world could use a good couple more of you."

"Not so sure about that," said Riku, rifling through his pocket for the cash, "But thanks."

"Pretty deep pockets," the Madame observed, "A less tactful lady might ask questions, but you won't need to worry about that over here. At the Grotto, silence is our specialty. Your secrets are safe with us."

Her gaze lingered on Riku for a good while, "Not that you have to spill any."

She rolled the bills up, slipping them squarely down the front of her gown, "Come on, handsome. Your firebrand awaits."

She started off across the room, Rubenesque hips swaying in an odd rhythm with the music from the harpsichord. Riku followed, feeling around in his now much more vacant pocket.

 _Better hope you won't need gas money._

Axel used to laugh about places like this. Not _this_ one, exactly, as Riku doubted a lot of Earthshakers had room in their wallets for one of Heaven's (Purportedly) Most Beautiful Souls. Except Seifer, of course, but that mystery would have to wait.

" _Anyone who needs to_ pay _for a roll in the hay probably isn't cut out for rolling,_ " Axel would drawl, lazily cleaning out his bike's perpetually faulty carburetor, " _Ideally, the roll_ itself _is the payment. Take that to heart. Pass me that screwdriver, will ya?_ "

Speaking of screws, the spiral staircase that led to the Grotto's upper level was so loosely affixed to the floor that Riku kept expecting it to tip over with every step he and the Madame put on it.

"Bless your heart, honey," she told him after one particularly precarious turn in the stair.

"W-what?"

"For not making a 'stairway to heaven' joke. That one's staler than half the salts I see in… _Here_ we are!"

She reached the top of the stairs, pulling aside a beaded curtain (wave patterns, naturally) to reveal a narrow, low ceilinged passage, lit with similar gas lamps to the ones from the entrance, and lined with low archways, each one curtained off.

The harpsichord in the distance played on, though it was so faint it may have been coming from an entire world away. Somewhat closer, Riku could hear creaking, shuffling, even slight gasps and whimpers.

Yet, somehow…it was all too quiet. Something seemed to be missing. The drowsy somnolence of the main room downstairs was replaced now by an all-too-empty silence. He felt a shiver going up his spine, but he disguised his unease, as the Madame paused in front of the fourth arch down on the right side.

"You've got her 'till sunup," she told him, parting the curtain to reveal a round door of carved, warped black wood (to Riku's relief), "Make every second count. If you need anything, just holler for Ursula. I'll hear you, don't you worry about that."

The Madame, Ursula apparently, turned the bolt in the door, stepping aside to let Riku in.

"Um…thanks," he told her, his heart pounding in his ears.

"Don't thank me, thank _her_ ," Ursula winked, giving Riku a nudge inside and, quick as clockwork, closing the door behind him.

It was even quieter here, in this small, spare, windowless room, its walls seemingly carved out of the cave itself. Glass lamps hung from pegs in the ceiling, shining through blue and green panels, giving the whole chamber an eerie, underwater cast.

A canopy bed took up about half the space in the room, with drapes and sheets in dark, navy blue. There were also a few pieces of furniture, made from the same, driftwood-looking material as the door: a nightstand, a dresser, a writing desk complete with stationary…

But Riku didn't quite have time to take any of that in, not when he saw the silhouette behind the closed curtains of the bed, a figure stirring, as if from a nervous sleep.

 _She's not even going to know why I'm here. To rescue her. Hell, I wouldn't believe it either._

Forget about _how_ he was going to rescue her. Somehow the reality of that aspect was only hitting Riku now.

He started toward the bed, tentative steps, reaching his hand out carefully for the curtains.

"H-hello?" he broached the question softly, as if to speak it too loudly would bring this whole den of thieves collapsing down on him.

She parted the curtain before he could, big blue eyes, wide, questioning, with a mix of innocence and unusual weariness Riku had so rarely seen. With her free hand, she pushed a lock of red hair, out of her face, as if to see him clearly.

"Oh," Riku breathed, looking at the stranger in the bed and feeling somehow as if all the air had been let out of his lungs, "You're not…"

She cocked her head to the side, her hair slipping out of the messy knot it had been tied into and falling in a waving cascade around her waist. Kairi never had hair so long, Riku knew. Everything else, however…the eyes, the build, the coloring, even the shape of her face, more or less…

He took a step back, suddenly feeling quite profoundly stupid. He'd blown the easiest cash it was possible to find when on the run in a place like this, on a single lead that hadn't even panned out.

"Shit," he muttered, averting his eyes, crossing to the writing desk, "Dammit. What the hell am I supposed to do now? What was I even thinking, this…this…"

He felt that implacable, raw rage take hold of him again, as he flung a Grotto-themed stationary pad, with abandon, across the room.

"It's over, that's it. I never should've even bothered, never gotten involved, none of this whole damn mess would ever have happened if I had just minded my own goddamn…"

He turned, half-blinded by his own anger, to see the girl, sitting up in bed, staring at him and breathing in short, shallow gasps. The writing pad he'd thrown had apparently just missed her by an inch and, though probably not a very dangerous weapon, Riku supposed he couldn't fault her for being scared.

He was kind of scared too.

"I'm…I'm sorry," he said, his voice hoarse, "I'm not…I'm not angry at you, or anything…I…I was…I was looking for someone else."

She hesitated, as if unsure of what to make of that. Riku saw she had a birthmark on the inside of her wrist, something like a three pronged spear or, from his angle, a fork.

"Not…I don't mean…" somehow, Riku's anger was quickly being replaced by embarrassment, "You're really…you're really…beautiful," he felt himself redden as he said the word. The girl seemed to find it funny too, looking away as if embarrassed for him.

"I didn't mean to scare you, or anything. Really," he moved a little closer to the bed, "It's just…it's been kind of a rough night."

She looked at him oddly for a short time, as Riku figured he might as well take one last shot in the dark.

"I…I don't know if maybe…if you know about any other girls at this place? Girls with red hair and blue eyes, like yours?"

The girl paused, pursed her lips, and then shook her head.

And, at last, Riku realized she hadn't spoken a word since he'd come into the room, nor even parted her lips from where she had them pressed firmly against each other. The blue light of the room did a good job to hide it, but now that Riku was closer to the girl, he could see pale pink marks on either side of her jaw, the legacy of some sort of clamp, or of pincers.

" _At the Grotto, secrecy is our specialty._ " Not just empty words.

She seemed to notice Riku's diverted attention, and she turned away, letting the sheet she'd been holding drop to her lap. She was dressed beneath it, Riku saw, in a tawdry turquoise dress, probably some attempt at lingerie, though Riku wasn't sure if anything could look seedy on her.

"I'm sorry," Riku said hastily, "I didn't mean to sta…"

But she was reaching down to the floor, a seashell necklace similar to Ursula's hanging from her neck as she bent, to collect the stationary pad Riku had thrown.

She straightened up and looked at him, setting the pad down in her lap, nodding over to the nightstand on Riku's side, where a thin brass pen was lying.

"Oh." Understanding, he fetched the pen, tossing it lightly to her. The girl set to writing at once, in a neat, small print, turning the pad so Riku could see it.

' _It's O.K. I'm Ariel._ '

Ariel. Riku nodded, pointing to himself, "Riku."

She wrote again, ' _You don't need to point. I can hear you._ '

"Oh," Riku nodded, "Right. Sorry." He ran his hands slowly down the rough fabric of the sheets, "I hope you're not…offended, or anything. you really are…pretty, and..." his tongue felt heavy in his mouth, for more than one reason, "...and stuff."

Ariel made a soft, whimpering noise that took Riku aback at first, but she was smiling. The sound must be the closest thing she had to a laugh, and judging by the way she winced as she did it, it still hurt to do so.

She turned the pen over in her hands, as if contemplating, before putting it to paper again, " _You're pretty_ " she left the pen hanging over the page, looking at him decisively before adding, " _shy._ "

She may as well have been some mischievous schoolgirl, eyes twinkling over some secret only she was privy too. Not a bad secret, though. A harmless, girly sort of secret.

"Shy. Huh," he mused, "Been a while since I've heard that."

Ariel relaxed her shoulders, any of the remaining tension she'd had from when he'd come in slipping away as she slid her legs out from under the coverlet to hang over the side of the bed.

She was writing again, " _You were going for the tough guy look?_ "

With a rapidly dissolving hesitation, Ariel reached forward and brushed her fingers over the bandana over Riku's hair.

He blushed, feeling stupid, "Something like that, yeah. What, it's not working?"

She shook her head, moving her hand down to the knot and tugging slightly at it, as if in question.

Riku tensed a little under her touch.

 _You can't trust her. So what if she's nice? She's a call girl, they're_ supposed _to be good at acting._

Yet it was difficult to imagine any of Heaven's Most Beautiful Souls, much less this one, being a spy. Forget the whole 'secrecy policy', or whatever they wanted to call it. Her look of abject terror when he'd first come in, and then her sudden relief when he turned out not to actually _want_ anything from her told Riku all he needed to know.

So he unknotted the bandana with her, feeling his sweat-matted hair come down around his shoulders, over his face.

A sharp intake of breath from Ariel. Not of recognition, but of surprise.

"My nan..." he trailed off, aware that would perhaps be too specific, "My folks used to tell me something must have scared me pretty hard when I was a kid. I used to be a natural blond,"

Mim had told the joke about once a day until he'd had his first growth spurt, at which point she'd finally developed some dose of self-awareness.

" _So you look a little different,_ " she would say, putting up her own purple-streaked silver hair in a hairnet, " _Nothing wrong in being different, lovey. All anyone wants is to stand out, anyway, why complain when standing out is built right into ya?_ "

She meant well, but she'd been pretty oblivious to a lot of things. Maybe she'd gotten sick of being a 'nobody' when she was a kid, embraced being zany, loopy... _purple_ as she got older.

But it had been different for Riku. All he could really remember from being a kid was standing on the sidelines, longing, yearning to be so inconspicuous, so _ordinary_ that he could just blend in, be like everyone else, even if it was only for one afternoon.

One, single, midsummer's afternoon.

Ariel was laughing again, holding her throat as if to control herself. Riku noticed pained tears come up into her eyes, and he leaned forward.

"Whoa, whoa...you okay?"

She nodded, coughing through strained laughs now, one tear dripping off her lashes, then two.

"I promise, I'll...I'll stop making you laugh."

She shook her head again, wiping away her tears as she retrieved her writing pad, " _You don't have to. I haven't laughed in a while. It doesn't hurt so much anymore._ "

Riku nodded, as if he understood, but really it was getting harder and harder to understand anything about this place.

"Ursula..." he noticed a barely perceptible flinch go through Ariel as he said the name, "...she said you were new. How long have you been down here? I mean...if you don't mind..."

But Ariel was already writing, quickly enough that Riku supposed she'd been waiting ages for someone, anyone to ask.

" _Since August. My birthday._ "

"Three months?"

Ariel shrugged, frowning haplessly, " _If you say so. It's hard to tell how time passes down here._ " her pen hovered delicately just over the pad, " _The girl you were expecting. Is she a friend?_ "

Riku hesitated, feeling her big blue eyes on him, so inquisitive, hanging on his every word, "No. Not exactly. Actually, she probably has every reason to hate me."

He looked over at one of the lamps hanging from the ceiling, if only to break free of those eyes. Kairi's eyes had looked the same way that night, at the Overlook, when she'd appeared at the top of the hill, her hands raw and red from where she'd fallen on the street.

"I think I've gotten her into some trouble. I'm trying to find her, see if...if I can help her."

Ariel listened, head cocked to the side, her hair practically trailing over the bedspread, yet despite her apparent idleness, she was writing with an automatic efficiency, turning to a clean page with a sharp tearing noise, almost like a typewriter.

" _I was trying to find someone too. That's why I came here._ "

"On your birthday?" he asked, and Ariel nodded, "Who? A friend, family?"

She sighed, averting her eyes, " _A guy. My Dad sent him away._ "

She had begun to write the word ' _Daddy'_ instead, Riku saw, but hastily scratched it out, as if afraid Riku would laugh at her, tease her for acting like a kid.

The thought had never crossed his mind. Riku wasn't quite sure what _he_ would have called his parents at Ariel's age, or when other kids switched from Daddy to Dad or from Mommy to Mom. He'd never needed to think about it, so he hadn't.

"You...you liked him?"

" _He worked for my Dad. I don't think he ever noticed me much, though. But Daddy_ ," and here she didn't even pause to correct herself, she was writing so fast, " _knew, and he sent him away. He was bad news, he said, worked for some bad people. He would just make trouble for me._ "

"More trouble than you're in now?"

Ariel looked away, her eyes shimmering again, and Riku instantly felt like an idiot.

"Hey...I'm...I'm sorry. I...should've been thinking..." he reached out to pat her on the shoulder, but she flinched away, sobbing now, sobbing into her hands, raw, scratchy sobs coming up from her raw and ruined throat.

"It's...it's not your fault," he said, half-expecting Ariel to snap out of it and deck him any second for playing the psychiatrist card, "It's not like _you_ sent him away. You liked him. If..." he paused, aware of how heavy his voice sounded, "...if I'd been you, I would've wanted to find him too. Just to see how _he_ felt."

Ariel drew back, her chin balanced on her knees. After some time in painful silence, she retrieved the writing pad and got back to work, pressing the pen so hard against the page Riku was surprised she hadn't shredded it full of holes.

" _Will you tell her how you feel? When you find her?_ "

She looked at him, not with any kind of distaste, just with a steeliness that looked out of place on her.

"I..." it felt as though he were being crushed in a vice, and yet the words felt long in coming, freed from him only by the unwavering, piercing stare of the girl on the bed next to him, another wide-eyed innocent who'd never asked for any of this.

"I will. I'm sick of secrets."

She nodded as if she agreed with him, brushing her hair out of her face as she patted his arm reassuringly, her other hand working carefully on the pad, turning to a third page, " _So am I. Sometimes I wish I could have just told him when I still_..."

But before she could finish writing, a sharp metallic shriek came keening out from the shell around her neck, causing her to drop her pen with a start, reeling back as she stared with wide-eyed shock at the bauble, taking it carefully between two fingers.

"Wait..." Riku breathed, leaning forward to take the shell from her. It appeared, on the outside, to be a little metal-plate knick-knack, prettily painted and carved, but nothing else special about it, just like...

"Ursula," he nodded so Ariel could see the little black grille of the speakers inside the shell, "She's listening."

Judging by the look of abject horror on Ariel's face, she hadn't been expecting that either. How could she? She _was_ new, after all. Riku could only imagine the punishment an older girl would get for telling another about the handy surveillance system their boss had equipped them all with.

"I told you my name," he told Ariel, getting to his feet and starting at once toward the door, "They know who I am, they know I'm here. They've been looking for..."

He yanked the door to open it, but it wouldn't budge. They'd been locked in, trapped.

"Dammit."

A clang of metal against metal turned Riku around on his heel. Ariel, in what seemed to be an impulsive-if-late attempt to give them both some privacy had taken off the necklace and thrown it up at a brass grille inset near the ceiling.

An air vent.

"That's it," Riku hurried over to Ariel's side, looking over at her stupefied expression, "What? They do it in movies all the time, don't they?"

He picked the now sufficiently destroyed necklace from the floor where it had fallen and lobbed it again at the vent, hitting the latch solidly and allowing the grille to swing off its hinges.

There was a chair positioned near the dresser, which Riku figured would be decent enough of a step ladder for him. He had already put one foot up on the chair before he turned back to Ariel, "Come on, come with me. Look, they know we were in here together, I don't want to think what they'd do to you if they found you here and not me," he gestured over to the vent, "Come on. Maybe we can both get out of here."

She looked uncertainly back at the bed, at the writing pad discarded on the floor. Then, with new purpose, she hurried over to it, ripped the pages she'd written on out of the pad, and shoved them down the front of her dress, looking back at Riku with an uncertain, nervous, but willing smile.

"Good idea." Riku told her, clambering from the chair to the top of the dresser, "It's none of their business, anyway."

The air vent, while not as roomy as movies may have led him to believe, was not entirely cramped. Riku imagined that was because these vents were pretty unconventional, having been carved right out of the cave as they were.

This meant that, though he had some room to crawl forward, the rocky surface on every side scraped and scratched at him gratingly.

He suddenly regretted having Ariel follow him, dressed only in that thin little number, yet one look over his shoulder at her told Riku that the girl was apparently far cleverer than he was. She must have selected a somewhat more appropriate, dark green, dress from the dresser before climbing in after him. It served to protect her knees and arms, at least, and she looked no less uncomfortable than he felt.

They passed a few other vents as they moved, though most of the rooms seemed unoccupied, probably because there was so little time left in the night.

A warm, dry breeze gusted sharply into Riku's face as they turned a bend to the right. He looked back at Ariel, "We're getting _somewhere_."

They went along a little farther, the breeze growing more and more consistent the farther on they went. It was as they crawled past another vent, that Riku came to a stop, hearing a familiar, throaty voice from the room below.

"...but it's him, alright, trying to be incognito, it's actually kinda cute,"

Riku peered through the narrow slits of the grate, and could make out Ursula's abalone-encrusted arm, draped lazily over the back of a carved wooden armchair, just within his reach, "But by all means, go back to your little dolly's embrace. I tell ya, I should've started charging by the minute years ago."

"Either way you'd still be robbing me blind," the man she was speaking to was directly beneath the vent. Riku could see a head of dark gray hair, almost blue under the lamplight, slicked back with an industrious amount of oil. He wore a smoky gray bedrobe, silk, maybe, which he was tying as he spoke.

"I thought it was house policy to _knock_ before barging in? What kind of flophouse are you running, here?"

" _Your_ flophouse," Ursula _tsked_ impatiently, "And I reserve the right to walk in on _you_ whenever I like. Or does Death feel shame, after all?"

"Aw, shut up," the man shook his head, "I'll be right out. This won't be a complete waste of time, s'long as we've got the kid."

"That's the spirit," Riku heard Ursula's receding footsteps, and then the door closing behind her.

The man turned behind him with a sigh to face whoever was waiting for him in the canopy bed, "We're gonna have to cut this one short."

As he turned back, Riku saw the glint of sharp, dark eyes in a deeply lined face. Hades, self-titled Lord of the Dead and, more importantly, the guy that wanted Riku as a hostage to Maleficent...for whatever reason.

"Don't make that face, Bluebird, it wounds me," Hades leaned over the bed, and Riku heard a little sigh, a whimper, maybe a kiss, "I'll be back soon. You know how crazy my job is."

He turned back to the door, crossing the room in two quick strides, pausing just short of the door, "On second thought, don't wait up. Big day tomorrow, and we all need sleep…gods and mortals all."

He slipped out the door, closing it firmly behind him. Riku heard Ariel let out a shaky breath behind him, indicating with her head that they should keep moving.

There was sense in that, of course. But Riku had now become aware of another sound in the room below. An even shakier kind of breathing, ragged and raw, like dry heaving, amplified in the comparative silence.

He could feel his heart hammering in his ears, feel the blood rushing through his veins. The breathing from the room below sounded primal, almost inhuman. Everything else seemed to fade away, until it was just that steady, constant breathing.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, Ariel, looking at him as though concerned. He looked back at her, blinking to bring her face back into focus. For a brief moment, he hadn't recognized her.

Riku felt his hand on the air vent's latch before he even properly knew what he was doing. The vent opened with a metallic shriek, and Riku had lowered himself into the room, barely hearing Ariel's short gasp of surprise as he did so.

He landed on the floor with a soft thud, looking up at the bed slowly. This suite was much nicer than the room where he'd met Ariel. Besides being bigger, the bed itself seemed large enough to drown in, draped in light, silvery fabric that shone supernaturally, offset by the bronze fixings of the headboard.

And, in the bed, sitting up and looking at him with the same surprised apprehension that Ariel had, was a woman, eyes wide and vacant, breathing in short, ragged breaths.

She was older than Ariel, maybe even older than Riku, but it was hard to tell. Her hair was cut short in a bob that may have been fashionable were it not so disheveled. It was dyed blue, like her eyes. She wore a blue dress, too, a thin fabric, not bedazzled like Ariel's, but somewhat worn, as if she'd had it on for a long time.

She shrank away from Riku as he looked at her, further down the bed until her head was pressed up against the headboard, fitting quite neatly into an engraved design of a laurel wreath.

"You don't...you don't have to be afraid," Riku heard him tell her, "I...I'm not gonna hurt you."

She shook her head wildly, and her breathing almost seemed to speed up as she half rose, half fell from the bed, scrambling back on her feet, a strangled cry leaving her throat.

"Wait, wait, please..." Riku stepped closer, hearing a light thud behind him, which he supposed must be Ariel coming down to join him, "I..."

The words died on his lips. The woman, (Bluebird, Hades had called her) lifted her arms to her face, as if to shield herself.

Riku saw red lesions running up and down her forearms, crisscrossing her wrists, her palms. Her hands were pressed over her mouth as it to stifle a cry, her eyes peeking out just over her fingertips, shimmering behind terrified tears, shaking her head back and forth.

Riku felt Ariel grab for his arm, to gently tug him back. She looked terrified, her head darting back and forth between Riku and the door. Riku understood why she was so frightened. They shouldn't be in here. They should be in the vent, hurrying toward the exit, before Hades and Ursula realized they were gone, before they came back here...

But he saw the fear in Bluebird's eyes, heard her pleading, fearful whimpers, saw the marks on her cheeks.

" _You can't just take everything you want!_ "

"No..." so soft that at first Riku thought he had spoken without realizing it. But...no. She'd been the one to speak, whispering from behind her hands, "No, no...please..."

"You...you can talk," he looked back at Ariel, who looked as confused as he was.

Bluebird pressed her hands to her throat, to protect herself or to throttle herself, Riku didn't know.

"I...I don't want to hurt you," the room itself seemed to be shrinking around them as he reached a hand out for the woman, for Bluebird, for whoever she was, "We're trying to get away. Come with us. I promise...we...we won't do anything to..."

" _No!_ " she cried, tears streaming down her face, " _No, no, no_..."

Riku felt a sudden stab of pain in his knees, and he realized he'd fallen to them, to be more on a level with Bluebird, a sorrow he couldn't even fathom building up in his gut.

 _What's wrong with me?_ Whispered some voice in the back of his head, _What's wrong with her?_

"You can't stay here, please, it's not...it's not..."

" _You can't just play with people like that, we're not just pawns, you can't manipulate things to get what you..._ "

He felt a hand turning him sharply around, and for a second it was Kairi who had grabbed him, spun him around, shaken him to demand answers, an explanation.

But it was Ariel, tears in her eyes, on her cheeks, shaking her head in defeat.

Riku looked at her breathing deeply, feeling the tears on his own face, "W-we can't just leave her," he told Ariel heavily, desperately.

They both looked at Bluebird, curled up in her corner, hands around her neck, begging, "No, no, please no."

Ariel shook her head hopelessly, nodding back up to the air vent. So he followed her, back up the dresser, into the vent.

Bluebird's sobs echoed in his ears long after she had dropped out of earshot. Riku lifted a hand to wipe the tears from his face, trying to figure out what he had seen, why he was crying, and why he felt so goddamn guilty.

Riku let out his own small sob, though even now he couldn't quite say what he had just seen, or why he was crying.

* * *

 **A/N** : This Chapter was a real joy to write, I found...mostly because of all the stuff that got to come out in it. One of my favorite things about writing _Radiant Creatures_ is that I get to deepen the world every scene, and each little reveal gets to open new mysteries.

At least, I hope that's how it turned out.

Chapter 11 is currently slated for September 30.

See you then!


	11. Ties That Bind

Chapter 11, Ties That Bind

* * *

 **A/N:** It's another 'B plot' chapter this week! Though, without spoiling much, I can say it will be the last for some time. Things will be escalating just about everywhere as we go on.

In this chapter, I introduce our 10th POV of 11. Also, a lot of character-building stuff, which I hope is satisifying to read.

Enjoy!

* * *

The ink still burned where it had been imprinted on Axel's wrist. Not a bad burn. he knew what bad burns were like, but a good, warm, _triumphant_ sort of burn.

And, after all, wasn't that just very appropriate?

"Transition to nogoodnik street urchin now at 80% completion," he drawled, pumping his fist in the air, if only to show off the shiny outline of the sunburst against his skin, "You feelin' it, Moonboy?"

"Probably closer to 30%," muttered Saix, wincing as he gingerly turned his own wrist over to look at the crescent moon that had been inked there, "Honestly, I'm still not getting the point of all this."

"The point?" Axel laughed, taking Saix's forearm and holding it up alongside his own wrist: sun and moon, side by side, "Why does there always have to be a point?"

Saix cocked an eyebrow, evidently unsatisfied. Axel sighed, "Tats are _cool_ , they show a little of who we really are. Saves a lot of trouble explaining."

"Ah," Saix nodded, "easy branding so we can be catalogued when the aliens attack. Gotcha," he smiled wryly, nodding his head down the road to where they'd parked their bikes.

"So..." he began again as they reached a crosswalk, busy as it always was on a hot summer afternoon, "...what's yours mean? The sun?"

"What's the moon mean?" Axel asked automatically, though Saix's expression told him he was actually expecting an answer. So he shrugged, "What? It's the sun. Sun/moon. Part of a set. Can't have one without the other."

Saix stood there, quietly, until the crosswalk light turned green for them to move on.

"No," he said at last, his teeth showing from between thinly parted lips, "Guess you can't."

A large, shapeless object was flung against the back of Axel's head.

" _Axel! Axel, dammit_!" a shrill voice, high and panicked, as a pair of hazel eyes came hovering into focus over his head, "Wake up!"

"What?" he asked, wearily, leaning up against the pile of throw pillows at the head of the bed, "Did we set the house on fire?" he attempted a smile, "Yanno, sometimes I amaze even my..."

But Larxene had already gotten up, now flinging things by turns into Axel's face. His shirt, his jeans, his jacket...

"I can't believe this," she was saying, "I can't believe this. I can't _fucking_ believe this!"

"Thanks, Rene," Axel grumbled from inside his shirt, "You were pretty neat too."

"He's here!" she pulled aside the bedroom window with one hand, hastily pulling her hair from her face with the other.

"Who's here?" he asked, one leg in his jeans as he hobbled over to join her.

"Who do you think?" she spun back around to face him, pressing her hands against her head with a frustrated groan, "I never should've...I never..." she shook her head, pulling a short-cut teal bathrobe on and tying it around her waist.

"Hey, hey, Rene, it's alright," Axel moved up behind her, putting out his hand to hold her shoulder, but she shrank away as if scalded, staring toward the half open door with wide eyes.

Axel listened, and he heard it too. A key turning in a lock, hinges creaking, footsteps coming over the threshold.

 _He's here,_ he told himself, _Sharp as ever, Ax. Shit._

"You have to leave," Larxene returned to the bed, tossing Axel's jacket back to him, then kicking his combat boots over from where he'd shaken them off last night, as they had come into the room, walking backwards, arms around each other, like two newlyweds in some screwball romantic comedy.

 _What a difference a new day makes. Well, that and an inconveniently early horticulture enthusiast._

"What? Leave? How?" he eased Larxene off the lapels of his jacket, trying to put on a breezy, ' _Aw, shucks, what a pickle we're in'_ attitude, "You got a secret passage in the library you haven't told me about?"

Larxene looked like she may have slapped him, were it not for the certain, solid thump of a foot on the stairs.

Shooting Axel one final, fiery, warning glare, she hurried out the door, closing it firmly behind her.

"Luxia! You're back early." Axel had to hand it to her: she may as well have just rolled out from dreams of kittens and daffodils, she sounded so innocent.

"Conference was cut short," the voice that answered her was a little deeper than Axel had expected, yet there was a softness to it, a sort of musicality that Axel supposed made sense, "I didn't mean to wake you up."

Desperate for some means of quick egress, Axel hurried to the window, so fast he almost collided head-first into the glass, like a confused bird.

Such an escape, Axel soon found, was ill-advised, not just because of the overflowing autumnal pansies in the window box, but also in part to the woman wheeling her baby along in a stroller down the sidewalk.

The toddler in the carriage must have seen Axel, given his overenthusiastic wave-turned spit-up. Axel waved back weakly and, feeling half ready to cough up his guts himself, hurried away from the window before the harried 30-something decided to investigate the source of her two-year-old's sudden onset of indigestion.

Larxene laughed from the stair landing, "Wake me? Come on, you know me. I've been awake since 3:00 A.M."

"Lost in your thoughts?" Marluxia suggested, "A penny for them."

Maybe throwing up wasn't such a bad idea after all.

"It'd just bore you to tears," Larxene evaded the suggestion so tactfully she might not have been evading at all, "And I bet you've had enough of _that_ this weekend, already."

Marluxia laughed at that. It was a _nice_ laugh, Axel guessed, if somewhat... _boorish_. Larxene would probably thud him upside the head for relying only on his predetermined assumptions (and Demyx's less-than-colorful stories) of what her boyfriend was like, but it was becoming increasingly clear that there must be _some_ credence in them.

"You know it. Our glorious Superior just _loves_ talking about his newest pet projects. I've got to show you the notes I took, it's gotten so bad I may have actually _forgotten_ how to spell 'molecular'. Brain's trying to do trauma control."

"That's a thing?"

"You'd have to ask the boss." a creak on the stairs, "Walk with me. I've gotta get out of these boots."

Axel tensed, hearing Larxene interject, "What, you were driving in those?" it seemed to him she had raised her voice about half an octave, as if he needed the extra warning, "Don't ask me to deal with your blisters."

"Wasn't considering it. We have the aloe for a reason."

They were both going back up the stairs. Axel hurried once back toward the window, then toward the closet on the other side of the room.

His mind reeling, and no sensible means of escape available to him, Axel resorted to the first impulse that passed through him when he saw the twin silhouettes from beneath the door.

Dropping silently to hands and knees, he dove under the bed, almost conking himself against the mattress as he did so.

 _Least it's not the Dugout couch_ , he mused, sucking in air to keep his body from bumping up against the bed's underside, _I was meant for a more glorious end than death by furniture._

He saw the pair of boots enter first: cream-colored leather, floral patterns worked into the material, and what seemed to be quarter-inch platforms. Axel may have laughed if he hadn't wanted to make the bed look possessed.

"I know, I know," Larxene's bare feet entered on Marluxia's heels, "I'm a slob."

He could almost hear the relief in her voice, but maybe that was just the power of dramatic irony at work.

"I was about to wonder if Demyx has been sneaking in here to wreak havoc behind your back. Not that I don't appreciate the honesty."

"This place is strictly off limits. Even Dem knows that," Larxene walked ahead of Marluxia, "He's probably knocked out in some dive somewhere, with his friends. They had a gig last night."

"Bless their hearts."the mock condescension oozed from every letter.

 _She better have just hooked up with him for his money,_ Axel found himself thinking.

"I showed up," Larxene continued, in a somewhat softer voice, her foot stopping just short of a scuffed metal accessory on the floor. An accessory Axel recognized in no time flat.

 _Perfect._

"I think I made his night." and she very discreetly kicked the motorcycle keys under the bed.

Axel wasn't sure if she knew he was down here or not, but the move was a smart one all the same. Hopefully none of his other personal effects were lying, pell-mell around the room. He and Larxene hadn't exactly been in the best of shape to be neat and tidy last night, staggering into this room to fall, one on top of the other (though at that point, Axel forgot which of them had been where) to keep track of things like that.

At least they'd had the good sense to leave his bike at the Dugout, instead of just hanging out in front of the house. Axel couldn't remember which of them had thought of it, but it was a spot-on move, either way.

"That was good of you," Marluxia crossed over to her, sitting down on the bed and, presumably, tugging Larxene down to sit next to him.

The resulting tremor dislodged enough dust from the boxsprings that Axel nearly choked, his eyes watering.

"Yeah, I'm apparently very charitable when bored," she crossed her legs, "Someone ought to keep me in check."

"Trying to suggest something?" Marluxia slid off his right boot, then his left, revealing a rather gaudy pair of Argyle socks, "I happen to _love_ when you embrace that closet philanthropy of yours."

"That's what we're gonna call it?" she laughed lightly, her ankle bobbing up and down with an uncommon innocence Axel wasn't sure he'd ever seen in her. It seemed...weird, in its way. Almost perverse.

Larxene, Rene, Rex, whatever...she'd always been varying degrees of 'tough' or, more overtly, 'bitch'. Axel couldn't recall her ever being innocent.

 _Maybe it's all an act. Maybe she's overcompensating, because of you._

Maybe he never should have come back here at all. She seemed to have been getting on just fine. It grated him to admit it, but there it was.

 _Never anything less than the Bringer of Chaos. And you wonder why people get tired of you so fast._

"Why not? And..." Marluxia stretched his legs across the floor, and Axel could see a pair of delicate, alabaster hands running down the length of his khakis, "we may both have more reasons to be charitable in the near future."

"Oh?" there was a short pause, "Oh. You mean..." she let out a breathless, girlish little gasp, "The promotion?"

"There's gonna be a new face on the Board of Directors in the new year," Marluxia sounded like he could barely believe it himself, "I am, apparently, the company's secret weapon."

"The only thing keeping them out of the red, that's for sure." Larxene bounded to her feet, "Oh my God, this is great, I can't even..." she pulled Marluxia back to his feet, giving Axel a view of both sets of legs, inches apart, as though ballroom dancing.

"You are amazing."

"You're not so bad yourself. And...don't get too excited yet, but..." he continued, in a stage whisper, "I'm making a list for potential new Heads of Finance. Know anybody?"

"Huh," Larxene feigned ignorance, "Pretty big shoes to fill. Does she get a nice new pair of Italian leather boots to seal the deal, or..."

"She gets whatever she wants," a soft kiss, "A little something tells me she already has a list?"

"Oh, you know me so well," Axel imagined the tilt of her head, the innumerable locks of hair that had escaped her braid fluttering back and forth in front of her face, as if she'd just taken off her helmet after a long ride and needed to shake the dust of the road off.

"What do you say I figure out breakfast while we prepare to conquer the world, yeah?"

"Huh. Picked up cooking while I was way up north? I _have_ missed a lot."

"Not likely," she said, maybe a little too fast, "I meant take-out. I know you've been wanting to try that German place in Tytla Square."

"Sounds like a plan," he took a step back from her, "I'll give them a call."

"Try not to wake the bird." Larxene cautioned him, "I don't need the cops to show up with a 'cease and desist'."

"Duly noted," and, with that, he was out the door, which he closed neatly behind him.

Larxene sighed, crossing over to the door, which she leaned against, as if to make sure Marluxia was actually gone.

"You can come out now," she said at last, in a measured voice.

Axel obliged, inching his way out from under the bed, brushing the dust from his hair back onto the floor.

Larxene raised her eyebrows, "There is a window, you know."

"There is also a nosy old lady across the street. Right? There always is. Safer to stay put."

"It sure as hell is _not,_ not now," she groaned, aggrievedly, burying her face in her hands, "The one time they end a conference early, the _one_ , goddamn time..."

"Congrats on the promotion, by the by," Axel gave her a light nudge on the shoulder, "You were always made for better things than Senior Financial Assisting, I told ya..."

"Could you stop trying to be funny?" she snapped.

"Why, do _you_ wanna try?" he paused, sighing, "Look, I'm sorry I got you into this, Rene..."

" _Don't._ " she said, however feebly, "Don't."

"Don't what? Larxene, it's just a stupid nickname, at this point, I think we..."

"Don't bother apologizing," she finished, "You didn't hold me at gunpoint. Hell, if you had, I probably would have kicked your ass out into the street."

"I bet. No one forces our Rex to do something she doesn't want to do," he sighed, "I didn't mean for that to sound...skeezy, it's just..."

"Whatever. Look, just go, before Luxia comes back..." she started steering him for the window.

"Yeah, about him," Axel interrupted, stopping at the window latch, " _Really?_ "

"Don't," she said it again, steely as ever, "You don't get to criticize. He's a good man, there aren't a lot of those in the world."

"Nah," said Axel, feeling the sting of her words hit him, "Nah, I guess not. Look, Rene..." he sighed, "Don't beat yourself up over...what happened last night, okay?"

"What makes you think I was?" she folded her arms, scowling.

"That." he shrugged, smiling halfway, "If you weren't, you wouldn't have gotten pissy."

"Pissy?"

"I didn't want to mess anything up for you," he barreled on, "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't, but...you've got something here. Really not sure what it is, but it's something, right?" he shrugged, "More than some of us have."

God, this was hard. Never mind that it felt the door could open at any moment, and Luxia could just pop his head in to see the both of them...

But he couldn't leave her now, not yet, not without making sure he hadn't just blown another old friend's life to smithereens after one stupid mistake.

"I shouldn't've got all... _heavy_ on you, back at the Dugout. That was my bad, that was...totally me. I just...I don't want you feeling guilty about it."

There was a brief silence, in which Larxene slowly cocked an eyebrow, "For the record, I don't really need your permission to stop feeling guilty. Second of all, last night wasn't just you." she smiled, shrugging, "I can take responsibility for myself just fine, thanks."

"I knew that," said Axel, quickly, "Believe me, I know. I just, yanno, wanted..."

"I know what you wanted," she said, not unkindly, "But if we want to talk about taking responsibility, maybe we oughta start a bit closer to home, yeah?"

"Point taken. Next time I see you, we'll have to go over those rules to maturity."

"Next time," in a tone somewhere between sarcastic and wistful, "Now go," she nodded her head toward the window, "Come on, fast."

She unlatched the window, indicating the drainpipe just adjacent to it, "And be careful about landing in the hyacinth bushes, Luxia's very..."

"...fussy?" he suggested. Larxene pursed her lips, but offered no further comment.

"Just promise not to take care of his blisters," he told her, swinging one leg out the window, "Remember your dignity."

"I never forget it." she smirked, watching him latch onto the drainpipe, "You too."

"Once I find me some, sure," he winked one last time at her, shimmying down the pipe and into the hedges.

 _Here we go again, out into the big wide somewhere_ , he thought, pulling his jacket's hood up over his head, the better to deter nosy passerby.

 _Son of a bitch._

* * *

"Believe me, I didn't _ask_ for him," Amphitrite said firmly, stirring her tea wickedly fast and yet somehow not spilling a single drop over the side of the cup and onto the saucer.

"His mother insisted he tag along with me, like some sort of old age assistant. She dotes on me like I'm half vegetable already, but she's a good woman."

Celeste looked across her kitchen table at the nervously grinning boy sitting next to the old woman, poised as if half-expecting to be told to duck and cover any minute.

"A lot of people dote on me," Amphitrite continued, with a pointed look in Celeste's direction, "I'd be churlish not to appreciate it, but it's all highly unnecessary."

Celeste, who was still having trouble understanding anything Amphitrite was saying over the pounding in her head, opted to look instead at their miserable third wheel.

"Well, it's a pleasure having Zack over. I feel like I haven't seen you in...um...in..." she blinked, her eyes swimming, "Um..."

"Three weeks," Zack answered promptly, clearly eager to have found some subject he could discuss unimpeded, "You were at the away game against Departure."

"Oh. Why yes I was," Celeste took another generous swig of her coffee, "It was a great game. You did really..."

"Oh, I wasn't, like, _in_ the game," Zack corrected her, his smiling slipping a notch or three, "I'm just the..."

"He's the string, I believe is the word." said Amphitrite said, "Ties things up when the usual boys aren't around."

She looked shrewdly at Celeste, like she knew some great secret.

 _But, then, it isn't really much of a secret, anyway? You've turned into a mess, and it didn't even take two full days._

"Second string, RB," said Zack, looking at Amphitrite with a smile, "It _was_ a great game, though. 28-7, and Sora..."

"...hurt his leg," Celeste recalled, "in the last two minutes, he hurt his leg, and he thought he'd torn something important. He was hysterical."

Maybe she shouldn't be talking about her son's moments of vulnerability with one of his peers, but Celeste found that, as long as she kept talking, her head didn't hurt quite so much, or it was at least harder to notice.

"Yeah, he was out of school for a few days," said Zack, "But he was alright."

"Just a false alarm," she agreed.

"He'll be alright this time, too," Zack assured her, with such a bright-eyed confidence in his tone, that he may have believed only his words could make it happen.

"What excellent sentiments," said Amphitrite with an approving nod, "Zacharias," Celeste noted that he turned a light shade of rose around his ears as Amphitrite used his full name, "Could you be a fine man and leave us ladies to our talk?"

"Oh, he doesn't need to go," said Celeste, partly out of sympathy for the boy and partly because she really wasn't relishing any extra time with her friend's brutal honesty.

"Not at all," agreed Amphitrite, "I'm sure he can make himself useful. The way his mother talks him up to me, I may never need to call a handyman again. I'm sure you have some housework for him."

Celeste wasn't sure if that was meant judgmentally but, looking around at the apartment, she had to admit she'd somewhat let cleaning fall by the wayside, having spent all of Friday at the police station and all of yesterday torn between work and the Dalman Club.

But it felt...weird to be giving some kid who wasn't hers chores, and on Sunday morning, no less.

Still, no point inviting an argument, "I...um...there are some shelves in the study, over there," she nodded her head to the half-open door that housed what had once been a walk-in closet before she'd chucked in a writing desk and had Cid install a shelving unit, "Just some dusting, I haven't really..."

"Dusting!" Zack sprang to his feet so quickly Celeste might have suggested a million-dollar reward, "Great. Dusting. On it!"

He was off into the den like a flash, tangle of black hair trailing behind him. Marie leaped off her usual perch by the coffee pot and followed him to the partially opened door, as if to see to it he didn't stir up any trouble.

"A spirited lad," Amphitrite announced once the den door closed anew, continuing in a more strained voice, as if communicating some grave truth, "And speaking of spirits..."

 _Oh, for the love of..._

"Amphitrite, for heaven's sake..." she began, in an admittedly feeble attempt at evoking some sympathy, or at least self-awareness in the woman.

"You know if you were hungover you could simply have turned me away when I arrived. I'd hate to intrude."

"I am _not_ hungover!"

Amphitrite waved her hand dismissively, "Call it what you like, I'm not about to sew a scarlet letter on your chest. Celeste, dear, I only worry about your health. It isn't good that you sit alone here, fretting over Sora and drinking yourself to distraction."

"I... _what_?" Celeste groaned, leaning back in her chair, "Amphitrite, I was _not_ drinking to..." she trailed off, remembering the bar at the Dalman club, the whiskey and sodas, stories about clay pottery and algae-like substances.

"I wasn't sitting here alone," she said instead, "I went out last night."

It was scary, really, how much Amphitrite, in that moment, with her pursed lips and eyebrow knit together, looked like her own mother, once upon a time.

How many times had Celeste come home, in the morning, noon or evening, to find her mother sitting up at the kitchen table, wrapped in her paisley dressing gown, a cup of tea in her hands, full of questions.

Celeste had learned very early that nothing but the truth would get past her mother, and yet her mother never liked the truths Celeste told her.

 _Aerith is barely older than Sora, Amphitrite could be my mother, Cid thinks he's my salty uncle...I need to get friends my own age._

Not her number one priority in life, at the moment, obviously, but it was true. Celeste could barely remember the last time she'd had 'peers', or whatever you could call them. It all seemed part of a different life, like everything else before the record store, before Sora, before they all betrayed her.

"Ah. Out." Amphitrite nodded glacially, "How excellent for you. I haven't gone out since I was widowed, myself. More precisely, since sometime before I was widowed. The social scene begins losing some of its appeal when you reach middle age."

She took another sip from her tea, "I should hope you didn't _drive_ back home in your condition? The roads are already getting slippery, I almost took a tumble myself on the way up here, if it weren't for my valiant gentleman in waiting." she jerked her head in a desultory fashion over to the den, and Zack within it.

Celeste repressed the urge to point out that this made Zack quite useful to Amphitrite, indeed. She was more distracted with the obvious ulterior motive to her comment.

"I went out with a friend from work," she said simply.

"Went out with, maybe. But left with...?"

Oh, she was too clever by half.

"My friend left a little earlier than me,"

It had been somewhat alarming, actually, the realization that Aerith had taken off so abruptly just because a well-intentioned stranger had decided to try laying on some charm. Celeste had somewhat forced herself to stop thinking about Aerith last night, what with everything else that had transpired at the bar.

"...so I got a ride from someone I met at the club..." the words curdled in her mouth as she said them, anticipating how Amphitrite would react.

"How pleasant of him." was all she said, her lips a tight line, "Do you know his name?"

 _Yes, I do, and you do too._

But she really didn't want to go into the particulars of her chance encounter with their respective kids' (well, charges, more specifically) History teacher.

Milo had actually insisted on driving her back up to Destiny, saying they were both going more or less the same way anyway. Celeste had only the foggiest memory of his old, but very well-maintained, Lincoln convertible, of the worn leather seat against the back of her neck, the taste of whiskey at the back of her throat, and the insistent voice in her head, so like her mother's, so like Amphitrite's, telling her that she had gotten herself into a fine pickle now, and this is what she got for making herself put Sora out of her head, even if for one night.

"It wasn't like _that_ , Amphitrite," she told her in as hard a voice as she could manage, "He was very kind, he bought me a few drinks, we...made each other laugh, and then he took me home. He didn't even ask to come upstairs. Would you like to inspect the bedsheets for verification?"

Amphitrite pooh-poohed the notion, "Nonsense. I was only asking out of decency."

"I can look after myself, Amphitrite."

"No doubt," she allowed, "But I think we can both come to agree that your circumstances are currently unusual," she shrugged, "Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if you _had_ decided to take up with some handsome stranger, if only to forget all about this worry, this panic, with Sora and Kairi and the rest."

"Oh, yeah," Celeste answered with a sharpness that even surprised her, "it's a thin, thin line between worrying about my kid's safety and sleeping with a stranger, right? That some old wives' tale I missed out on, or something?"

Amphitrite, to her credit, looked abashed, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you out as some kind of..."

"Hey, um," Zack poked his head out of the den, holding a woman's clutch in one hand and a suede wallet in the other, "Like, I was just wondering who's 'Becky Lungrin' and why does she look like..."

A knock came to the door, a quick 'Shave and a haircut'.

Unable to resist, Celeste tiredly tapped her teaspoon against her mug, 'Two bits', "One moment!"

She gave Zack an apologetic look as she walked past, silently signaling that she would explain once she was finished with the...

"Oh," Celeste opened the door and stopped short when she saw the two figures in the doorway, "Good morning."

Selphie giggled like a lunatic, pressing one hand to her mouth to stifle the sound while she leaned against a much more bleary-eyed, yet not exactly displeased, Tidus.

"...Hi, _Celeste_ ," Selphie pronounced the name like it was some secret incantation, propping her hand against the doorframe with a lack of balance that was either intentional or just showcased that Celeste wasn't the only one having a rough morning.

"Hello," Celeste smiled weakly, looking from Selphie to Tidus, who, she observed, was wearing some mutation of his shirt and trousers from last night. Selphie, however, had changed into a skirt and blouse, and had apparently decided she would accessorize as well, though her earrings didn't match.

"Sorry, um..." Tidus ran his hand through his hair, putting an arm around Selphie, as if to steady her, "...we were gonna call, but..."

" _Didn't want to wake you._ " whispered Selphie, leaning forward, even though Celeste was sure the 'whisper' could still be heard loud and clear by the neighbors to her left, right, and downstairs.

In doing this, her attention seemed to fall on one of the two people standing behind her. Selphie's smile faded at once, a look of mingled mortification and surprise coming over her.

"Uh...hey, guys." Zack waved at them with the hand that held the purse, "Were you...um...were you looking for..."

"My bag, yeah," Selphie moved past Celeste, into the apartment proper, leaving Tidus to saunter in slowly behind her, staring at Zack like he half expected him to explode in all their faces, "I swear, we were halfway home before I noticed I forgot this thing."

"Yes," said Celeste, closing the door neatly behind her, "I figured I would just...er...hold it here. I would've called your house, but I'm not sure if your parents..."

"Oh, that is _so_ thoughtful of you, really, truly," Selphie accepted her clutch and wallet from a gobsmacked Zack, "Mom hates when I get up to trouble, like I can't handle myself... _Hello,_ Zack."

As if she'd just noticed him there for the first time. Zack smiled sheepishly, "Um...hey. Becky Lundgrin, right?" he nodded at the I.D.

"I am a woman of many names. Ti, what did yours say, I totally forgot..."

"Something Petkevicus." muttered Tidus.

"He could pass for Greek, yeah?" she jerked her thumb over to Tidus, winking at Zack, "So...what's this?" she looked from him to Celeste.

"An excellent question," and Amphitrite emerged from the kitchen, Marie sulking along at her heels. Celeste felt her eyes on her, boring holes, unblinking.

"Celeste, you didn't mention you were out clubbing with my granddaughter's friend. Assumed identity or otherwise."

"Gran!" cried Selphie, pressing her newly-reacquired clutch to her collarbone, "Oh, okay, wow, so maybe...maybe I should have called..."

"No, it's fine." Celeste turned to Amphitrite, "We ran into each other at the club, and I certainly didn't buy them drinks."

"We took care of ourselves _just fine_ ," Selphie nodded grandly at the last two words, her eyes wide as though stuck that way.

"Club?" Zack blinked, looking from Selphie to Tidus, "That's...that's kind of cool."

"Oh, now look," clucked Amphitrite, "You two are going to turn my aide to a life of deviance, and then what will I do with myself? Die a vegetable, I suppose."

"I'm sorry," Tidus lifted his hands as if for attention, "I'm not...I'm not really _getting_ what's going on here."

 _You're not the only one_ , Celeste thought, but she said, "I was just having Zack and Amphitrite over for breakfast," noting Selphie's inquiring glance, Celeste added, "The _three_ of us."

Heaven help her if Selphie started spreading talk of her and Milo Thatch around the Destiny High student populous.

"Four," added Zack, scooping Marie up in his arms as she came across to him.

At the sight of Zack and the purring house pet, Selphie let out a little squeal that sliced through Celeste's hungover head like a cleaver and, judging by Tidus' muffled swear, didn't suit him all too well either.

"Ooh, _Marie_! Hasn't it been a long, long time since I saw your little precious, precious, face?" she leaned forward, so her nose was practically brushing against Marie's.

In a rather uncharacteristic display of cooperation, Marie lapped her own tongue up to lick her own nose, prompting Selphie to giggle.

"She likes you!" announced Zack.

"Of course she does, I used to bring this little baby treats _all the time_ ," she looked up at Celeste, "Remember?"

Celeste remembered the giant pile of yarn-mice that had accumulated under the bed, but she figured Selphie didn't want to hear about that.

"Vividly."

"Oh, and Ti and Sora used to make climbing towers, out of books and...um..."

"Cereal boxes," Tidus smiled faintly, lifting his eyebrows, "All sorts of stuff."

"I bet your climbing days are over, huh, honey?" Selphie asked Marie coyly, "I feel at _least_ an extra eight pounds on ya."

"Age affects us all," said Amphitrite clearly, lowering herself to the recliner, "One day, if you're lucky, my dear, you'll learn that just as well."

Still rubbing Marie slowly on the head, Selphie turned to look at Amphitrite, a softer cast coming over her, one which Celeste was unused to seeing on her.

"You doing okay?"

"I thought I was, but considering I haven't yet gone for drinks and dancing with a stranger I may have been quite mistaken." But Amphitrite was smiling, thinly and papery though it was, "I haven't been without some help," she nodded over to Zack.

"Aw, that's so sweet of ya!" Selphie told him, while Tidus spoke up, "So...you're like one of those old people nurses too? You keep busy, man." he nodded, with a slow smile.

Amphitrite mouthed _Old people nurses_ with an expression of distaste, as Zack mumbled something about how it was "Not really..." and "Mom's idea..." which, if Celeste had learned anything from Sora over the years, wasn't really going to help his case much.

"Why don't you stay for breakfast?" she offered, suddenly, "You both look like you could use a pick-me-up." she paused, "Coffee, I mean."

Selphie looked at her, askance, her hand pausing in its progress up and down Marie's back.

"Oh, well...I mean, if you're asking... _I_ didn't have any plans, or anything, but maybe..." she looked over at Tidus who, his hands in his pockets, shrugged blithely.

"Yeah, the 'rents aren't gonna go postal if I'm gone a few extra hours."

"Even in this current climate?" Amphitrite asked the question casually, as if her granddaughter hadn't been a victim of the 'climate', or whatever she wanted to call it.

"What can I say?" he managed a sly smirk, "They've got a lot of faith in me."

Celeste wondered if that was really all, but Tidus seemed to want the matter to rest there, so she let it.

So it was that Celeste ended up standing over the stove, making pancakes for four while Amphitrite returned to her cooling tea at the table, and the kids milled about the place, laughing and talking.

A happy, domestic scene, oddly reminiscent, in its own way, of long ago weekends. Sora and his friends, whenever they elected to stay inside on a rainy day or during a snowstorm...

And yet, it was incomplete. Sora and Kairi were gone, and here were Zack and Amphitrite in their places, parts of the same puzzle, but they still couldn't quite fit.

"Celeste," Amphitrite turned herself in her chair, to better face her at the stove, "I suppose I must apologize."

"Apologize?" she didn't look up from the griddle as she said it.

"Oh, come now, don't string it out. You know how many people have tried to wrangle an 'I'm sorry' from me and never gotten one?" she smiled thinly, "I'm a very straightforward woman."

"Yes you are, and that's very admirable of you."

"Hm. Well, in my straightforwardness, it seems I may have been too..." she paused, as if hoping Celeste would suggest an adjective for her.

Celeste didn't, if only because that probably wouldn't be a very nice thing to do.

"...presumptuous," Amphitrite decided at last, "We have both lost children, and we are both in a state of worry. Who am I to pronounce judgement on you for coping in your own manner?"

"You were just concerned," said Celeste.

"Not so. I'm afraid I've always been something of a control-freak. Kairi used to say it all the time, and I won't say she's wrong. I married a businessman, my father was an investor...I'm used to having everything just so." she sighed, "Not all of us have such a luxury, though. And I ought to have remembered that."

Celeste turned off the gas, turning back to Amphitrite, "You know, I really, really want to be a control freak. I do. Maybe I am, a little, with Sora, sometimes. It was...it was so hard, you know? Those first few years, just him and me and..." she sighed, "the entire world out to get us, that's how it felt. And I would just...wake up in the night, breathless and with tears in my eyes, terrified that someone was gonna take him from me."

She'd hidden those tears, as best she could. No use getting Sora, barely old enough to understand, all worked up, asking questions. She had to be strong and nurturing, a pillar for her baby, a rock.

"And now he _has_ been taken from me and..."

"You're afraid you'll just fall apart?" Amphitrite nodded slowly, "Well, you needn't worry about that. You've got my harridan self around to keep you in one piece, don't doubt that."

"I won't," said Celeste, suddenly reminded of Sora in the parking lot outside the DPD, hinting at her that she hid her emotions so he wouldn't be scared for her.

"I promise."

Amphitrite looked like she was about to say more, were it not from the sudden strains of music pouring from the half-opened door of the den.

There was a little delighted squeal as Selphie dashed into the doorway, Zack looking anxiously over her shoulder. In her hands was a faded square of cardboard: a record sleeve.

"I...I...I was dusting," said Zack meekly, but Selphie overwrote him, "I'm _so_ sorry if I'm violating your personal space, or anything, but you've got a _goldmine_ in there, I've never even _seen_..."

"It's alright," Celeste waved it off, smiling down at the old Cher album in Selphie's hands, "That...actually, most of those, I just leave them there collecting dust. I don't remember the last time I ever even _heard_ this one..."

"Well, _I_ sure do!" Selphie crossed into the main room proper, plopping herself down onto the sofa, shortly followed by Zack and Tidus, the latter of whom was valiantly trying to hide a boisterous, if self-aware grin.

"This was my _jam_ , back in the day," she turned over to Tidus, "Ti remembers."

"For better or worse, yeah." he scratched the back of his neck, "You never made me Sonny, though, so..."

"It is a _great honor_ being Sonny." interrupted Selphie, "Sora never understood it either, but..."

"I'm sorry," said Zack, "What are we talking about?"

"Oh, this thing we did when we were kids. Maybe Celeste remembers?"

"Vaguely," she said, not wanting poor Zack to feel any more on the outs than he clearly did already, "Your talent shows. Sora used to go on about them."

And, yes...now that she came to think of it, the records had come into play, too. She remembered Sora thumbing through the sleeves on her shelf, chewing his lip with a childish expression of intense thoughtfulness.

He hadn't seemed to like Cher very much, or R&B, or any of that. But he was never one to be let out of the games, her son, always eager to play his part, for the sake of his friends.

" _Mom, why'd you have all this music if you never listen to it?_ " an innocent question, and a good one. Celeste was so neat, so orderly in every other aspect of the house, it must seem odd that she would hold onto so many old things she never used.

" _They're keepsakes, sweetie_ ," she answered at last, bobbing her foot up and down on her ankle, " _They...help me remember._ "

" _Is it that easy to forget?_ "

" _...No. No, but...it does make it easier._ " she had lowered herself down to the floor next to him, helping him to turn the records over one by one in their pile, " _Especially when it gets harder to remember the little things, because the big picture is...a certain way_."

She wasn't sure Sora had understood her back then. She'd barely understood herself. But it was just what she felt. As the years had gone by, and as, one by one, every piece of her life, her world, had systematically begun to turn against her, she had sought solace in familiarity.

The old loft, above the record store, and Sora, only a few months old, laughing himself to sleep as she played Laura Nyro, to soothe him to silence.

"I'm sure you were a rare talent," said Amphitrite vaguely, as if to get the compliment out of the way.

"Who said _was_?" Selphie promptly cleared her throat. Celeste may have imagined Tidus groaning in exasperation, but Marie definitely went and darted beneath the couch, as if to escape.

" _I was five and he was six_ ," Selphie certainly had the 'wailing' aspect down to a science, " _We rode on horses made of sticks_..."

"Ha!" Zack went and sat on the arm of the sofa, head tilted as if to better listen to her, "Pretty sweet."

Selphie shot him a thumbs up, going on, " _He wore black and I wore white/He would always win the fight..._ "

"So _this_ is what a house full of children is like," Celeste almost jumped at Amphitrite's voice so close to her ear, "Clearly, I was most deceived."

And, despite herself, despite her hangover, despite everything, Celeste laughed, patting Amphitrite lightly on the shoulder.

" _Bang bang/He shot me down/Bang bang/I hit the ground/Bang bang/The awful sound/Bang bang/My baby shot me down..._ "

* * *

Even after all this time, Saix still couldn't fight off that interminable twinge of surprise as the bristles of stubble came off on his razor, blond and not blue.

Yet the new growth came in so rarely, anyway, that Saix felt he rarely ever needed to shave. Once a week, on Sundays, if only because it seemed like the sort of thing a proper gentleman was supposed to do.

He studied himself in the mirror, dabbing at his wet jaw with a towel, and teasing away some waves of his own naturally unnatural cobalt out of his eyes.

 _You might as well be a dog in a downpour. Looks like you've found your aesthetic at last._

He sighed deeply, pulling his hair away from his face and binding it into a ponytail. Squall had given him the idea, even if he didn't know it, when he'd begun growing his hair out again.

Saix turned his head this way and that in the mirror, running his fingers lightly down the newly smoothed surface of his jaw. His fingertip ran up against an irregularity, and he hissed in pain, his finger coming off red with blood.

Cut himself shaving. Again. So much for masculinity.

Beethoven echoed through the apartment as Saix cleaned himself up and began to get dressed, playing off his tricked out new stereo system. By 'tricked out', it had both a cassette deck _and_ a record player, both of which still worked after two different owners. He'd bought it for a steal from a neighbor who'd moved out.

There was something transformative about Beethoven, Saix had always felt. His mother had used to play it in the house, on stormy evenings. It stimulated the mind, she would always tell him, made it easier to learn, to remember.

Saix couldn't vouch for the Master's supposed genius-bestowing powers, but the music certainly helped him to think. His mind wandered too much, nowadays…especially recently.

He exhaled deeply, feeling the pounding strains of the piano course through him. He felt it in his blood, in his veins, waking him up, invigorating him, wiping away any lingering thoughts of the real world, of work, of commitments, of loyalties past and present.

For just a few, beautiful minutes, Saix could just close his eyes and be someone _Other_ , some nameless, faceless, history-less nobody, untethered to the commitments of a job, to loyalties of a pesky, unrelenting past, to the perpetual uncertainty of the future or the never-ending moral quandary of responsibility and action…

A knock at the door, and Saix opened his eyes with a shaky gasp, seeing himself reflected in the mirror, loose lock of hair dangling before his eyes, new droplets of blood budding beneath the gauze on his chin.

Half naked, he stood, a towel wrapped around his waist, looking at himself in the mirror as if he didn't even know who he was. A perfect, unasked for meditation, transporting him to another world, another life…

And all of it had to come crashing down, because a visitor had decided to come calling for once in his life.

"Just a second," he whispered, not looking away from the mirror.

But in his head, he couldn't help but count, like a kid trying to chase away a thunderstorm.

 _One, two, three, four, I don't want to get the door._

Another knock. Giving up with an aggrieved groan, Saix pulled a shirt (teal and gray flannel, incidentally) from the doorknob and set to buttoning it as evenly as sluggish, tired fingers could muster.

"Coming!" he called, moving to the living room, "Keep it together."

"You know, I would," came an ungodly chipper voice from the other side of the door, "But I'll just come apart anyway, and _what_ would be the point?"

"Yuffie." He guessed it on the nose before he even had the door half open. And there she was, Detective Yuffie Kisaragi, grinning like the cat that ate the canary.

"Yuffie?" he repeated, as a question, suddenly conscious of the fact that he was only wearing a half-buttoned shirt and a rapidly unknotting towel.

"Expecting someone else?" she leaned against the doorway, her brow crinkling at the bridge of her nose, "I'm not _interrupting_ something, am I?"

"What? No… _no_." he rolled his eyes, feeling the color rise in his cheeks, "I...I thought you might be the mailman or something."

"Are the shorts _that_ bad?" she winked, turning 180 degrees as if to show the contours of her olive-tone too-short shorts. Good thing she wasn't at work; Commissioner Ratcliffe would likely have a coronary on the spot, for a number of reasons.

"Look, I'm sorry for barging in on Sunday," she looked honestly sympathetic, and maybe a little embarrassed too, though with Yuffie it was never easy to tell, "But dispatch only has your address on the rec, so I didn't know what number to call…"

"There isn't one," Figuring that they were both going to end up looking a certain type of less-than-innocuous way if they stayed here in the hallway any longer, Saix stepped aside to let Yuffie into the apartment.

"No phone?" Yuffie entered the apartment, her hands crossed in front of her as though she were an elderly tourist on a walking trip of European churches, looking around at the worn suede sofa, the kitchen island, and the recently-repainted silver bookcase with a quiet, yet curious reverence.

"How do you _do_ it?"

"It's out of order," Saix shrugged, "We've got one phone in the building that we all share. I know, it's very…Spartan."

"Not the word I would've used, but then I totally bombed English class." She paused in her wide-eyed observation, her eyes falling on the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the living room, criss-crossed with black bars.

"But you've got a _view_ to make up for that," she commented, crossing over to stand by the window, "Keeps you from going stir-crazy."

Saix couldn't keep the smile from spreading on his face, "Nah, I feel comparatively sane."

" _Comparatively?_ " she turned back to him, arms crossed, "What, can't a girl visit her cophouse colleague for a favor without being certifiable?"

"Sure she can," he didn't point out that she'd misread his jibe. Let her think he was talking about her; even after a whole year at the DPD, he still had trouble deciding what people should know, and what they shouldn't about him, about where he came from.

After all, if Squall could get away with being a walking enigma why couldn't _he_?

"Let me get you something," he nodded toward the kitchen, "Then you can tell me what this big deal thing is that couldn't wait till tomorrow."

"Don't bother yourself, I'm fine,"

"I'm not," he opened the fridge, deftly collecting three eggs and corresponding slices of bread (a little worse for wear, that), "And I don't believe in eating while my guests watch, going hungry. Indulge me."

"Fine," she waved her hand at him, watching as he cracked the eggs into a bowl, "You cook?"

"You don't?"

"Do toast, cereal and popcorn count?" she reached for the whisk before he could retrieve it, tossing it to him anyway.

"Well, _French toast_ does," he accepted the whisk with a tired smile, getting to work, "Well…?"

"What?" she batted her eyes innocently.

Saix repressed the urge to whack Yuffie with the whisk, "Your news. It's not Squall, is it?"

It had sort of rankled him, how suddenly Squall had left after being assigned his recon job. Not even a proper goodbye. Saix figured that was to be expected, really. Still, he only had so many friends at the station, and Squall had always been good to him. It felt funny, not knowing where he was now, whether he was in any danger…

"Nope," Yuffie shook her head, "Haven't heard from him. No biggie. No news is good news, believe it or not. This is kid stuff to him." She looked down into the bowl, as if mesmerized by the swirling yellow mass of egg yolks, " _This_ is food?"

"It will be. Do me a favor, pass me the griddle, top cabinet, right behind you."

As Yuffie did as instructed, Saix looked at her in measured fashion, "So…if you're not here about Squall, then it stands to reason…"

Yuffie set the griddle on the stovetop, "You know I'm on Axel's case, right?"

 _And there we go._

"Yeah. My condolences." He said it kindly, inoffensively, at the same time feeling a prickling at the back of his neck.

Would it always come back to Axel? Would every single movement Saix made for the rest of his life be forever connected back to him, like some smiling, green-eyed ghost forever at his heels?

"I'm not hiding him in my sock drawer, but by all means feel free to check."

Yuffie laughed, but Saix could tell from her face that she felt a little self-conscious herself, "I didn't think so. I mean, I _could_ get a warrant, but then I'd have to run by the Comish and I wouldn't wanna disturb the sacred Sunday morning routine of football and seven layer dip."

"He _does not_ ," Saix let out an aghast laugh, lowering the slices of toast into the egg batter one by one.

"Has my nose been growing? No. I tell only the truth," she leaned forward on the counter, "I had some questions."

"About Axel?"

"And you," she spoke softly, but procedurally, "I wanted a kind of picture of your life back then…before you came to Destiny."

"For the record?"

"You don't mind, do you?"

Saix hesitated. He probably should have seen this coming. The whole station knew he and Axel had been friends once, had lost touch when he came to Destiny. It was a story, a biographical blurb, the most easily accessible part of Saix's history, and therefore the only one anybody cared to know.

"What do you want to know?" he asked at last, lowering each slice of toast into the griddle, prompting a satisfying hissing noise from the gas.

"You were in the same motorcycle gang, back in Twilight. Right?"

"We were. Earthshakers, Twilight chapter. It was sort of an unspoken caveat to having a bike back then, you joined one of the gangs. Still, wasn't really my thing."

And Axel, maybe, had understood that. Saix didn't really think the whole hierarchy, the layout of the Earthshakers as a whole appealed to Axel either, very much. Axel didn't like feeling beholden to anyone.

" _You join a leather jacket gang as a_ symbol _,_ " Saix remembered him saying, exhaling a plume of cigarette smoke into the hazy afternoon sun, " _Anarchy, down with law and order, we are young and free and take orders from no one. Right?_ "

" _I don't know, Ax, I didn't memorize the welcome brochure._ "

" _Aw, fuck off, Moonboy_ ," he laughed, though, flicking the spent cig over his shoulder, " _We oughta start our_ own _gang. No rules, no chapter meetings…just us, and the people who matter, running our world, our way._ "

And, though they'd never made it official, Saix supposed that was the whole point of the Dugout, that worn little burrow in the wall, that hidey-hole that had become their home.

"We ended up getting sick of it," Saix continued, "Decided to relocate, into the sunrise, etc."

"But Axel just…joined up with the Earthshakers again. Better management?"

"I wouldn't know, Yuffie, he never told me. We lost touch pretty soon after coming here."

He could tell the question was on Yuffie's lips, begging to be asked, to be aired out and get the whole thing over with.

He decided to spare her the agony.

"I wanted to move on, and…and I don't think Axel got that. If he had it his way, he'd still be sixteen. You know what I mean?"

Yuffie nodded, "Yeah, I do. _I'd_ never want to be sixteen again, though."

"No?"

She laughed, "Never. Believe me, I've come a _long_ , long way. I never got that whole 'golden years of teendom' thing."

"Good on you," he lowered the gas on the stove, "Axel's restless, that's how he's always been. You can't chain him down."

"Wild as a flame on the wind," quipped Yuffie.

Saix looked up at that, maybe a little too sharply, and Yuffie sighed, "Punny?"

"Punful. Get some dishes out of that cabinet, will you?"

"Look, Saix…" Yuffie hesitated, setting the plates down side by side on the counter, "Some people think that, because you and Axel used to be kinda tight…"

"Some people?" Saix didn't look up as he separated the toast onto the two dishes, "Huh. I didn't know I appealed to such risqué demographics."

"…that maybe you shouldn't be part of this case. You know, conflict of interest, fear of reliability, yadda, yadda ya. They think you can't be trusted to investigate your old friend."

The news was little surprise to him. Nobody had said so much to him about it, short of Squall's brief description of Yuffie's assignment a few nights ago.

Saix had told him to warn Yuffie, tell her to be careful around Axel. He wondered if Squall had passed the message on, if he'd taken it seriously.

"So, you're defying the brass?"

"Can't defy anything. No one ever _told_ me not to come to you." She accepted the offered breakfast plate with a nod and a somewhat guilty whiff, "Look, wanna be honest?"

"It would be very refreshing, yes." He took his own plate, nodding over to the kitchen island for them both to sit.

"If they really wanted to take that whole 'conflict of interest' thing seriously, D.A Hartford would never have been put on Alice Kingsleigh's disappearance in the first place, and the Comish would never have sent Squall to our local Netherworld."

She hauled herself up onto one of the stools with a hearty sigh, cutting into her French toast with gusto, "Everybody's connected. My story is your story, your story is Axel's story and now…by order of the Precinct, Axel's story is my story."

"You have my sympathies." Saix quipped taking the seat across from her.

"Oh, that's all nice and everything, but I want more than that." She put a first piece of toast in her mouth and proceeded to purse her lips with a delighted sigh, "OhmyGod _sogood_ ," she spoke through a full mouth, "You're really good."

"So are you," she was buttering him up, Saix could tell at once.

The French toast was _okay_ , he supposed, but Yuffie had this habit of blowing everything up to a thousand times its natural size, for dramatic effect. Apparently, it was a really good asset, made her 'endearing'.

It worked. Saix would be the first to admit that he was very susceptible to grand displays of warmth and goodness.

"Fine. I'll hear you out. What's your game?"

Yuffie beamed, her fork teasing the outer corner of her lips, "Axel left town on Thursday night. We put an APB out for him the next day. No way he could've slipped out of the county, on a motorcycle, without being spotted."

"Ergo…"

"He was driving west," Yuffie cocked her head to the side, "Seems to me, our perp was Homeward Bound."

 _Homeward bound…as if there was ever any doubt._ Where else would Axel go, cornered as he was, but back to the only other place in the world that could be familiar to him?

For all Ax's talk about wanting to see the world, wanting to have a grand, adventurous life, he was trapped by familiarity. It comforted him, protected him…gave him an illusion of safety, if nothing else.

Just an illusion, though. Just as false as a faded tatt, or the unearthly blue of a solstice moon, glimpsed from the horizon.

"…you alright?"

Saix blinked, reminding himself of where he was, _when_ he was. Yuffie had propped her head up in one hand, looking at him with concern.

Saix realized his hand was shaking, noticeably unsteady against the linoleum countertop.

"Oh. I'm…I'm fine, sorry."

"You sure? You looked a little spacey."

"Thinking, that's all. You're right. He probably did go back home…Twilight, I mean."

"And he's probably still there, thinking up a way to skip town without being seen. Like a rat in a trap…" she winced, "Hypothetically."

"Axel's a quick thinker," Saix told her, "I mean, the only time he _does_ think is when he's cornered. He'll have found some place to hide by now, work out a plan."

"Think he's got some readymade safehouse? Maybe some old friends...family?"

"Not his family," said Saix slowly, as a reluctant image crept into his head, "But…he may have some…I don't know if you'd call her a 'friend', but…"

He's already said too much.

"Her?" Yuffie cracked a smile, like they were just girlfriends gossiping over coffee, "So, he _wasn't_ just all talk back in lockup?"

"No…no," Saix said quickly, "Still a _lot_ of talk. This girl…" he picked at his shirtsleeve, "…she was the only one. And they didn't leave on the best of terms, you know."

It felt…weird, sort of unfair, to be talking about this now. Saix couldn't remember the last time he'd ever mentioned it.

 _It's not the same. It's policework, you're not betraying anyone._

And, really, it didn't even count as a betrayal, really. Not of Axel.

"No chance of him charming this one back, huh?" she shrugged, "Squall gave me your message, before he left."

"I meant it," he told her, feeling a twinge of embarrassment, "Axel can be dangerous, when he wants to be. All it takes is a smile and a wink."

"I'll bet," Yuffie said softly, "You know, if it wasn't for that tender little warning of yours, I wouldn't've dropped by you at all. This _matters_ to you. Right?"

"I think Ratcliffe would say that's just why you shouldn't've come by."

"I already told you. Everybody's involved already," she leaned back, crossing her legs, "I don't want to… _hurt_ Axel, or anything. Look, I'm basically 100% convinced Riku was innocent in the first place, so Axel was basically helping a wrongly accused friend, as far as I'm concerned."

"Always seeing the best in people," Saix muttered.

"I've heard it before. I think it's a worthy trait in a cop. We get _such_ a bad rap as unfeeling robots, don't we?"

Saix had been talking about Axel, but he supposed Yuffie was right in describing herself too.

"You're right, we do. So…you want me to tag along?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow, if you're interested. Don't worry about the Comish, I'll smooth it all over with him before he even knows what I'm saying."

Her enthusiasm was palpable, Saix had to admit. All the same, the idea of going back home, going back to Twilight, to find Axel, to bring him in…

 _And then who'd be the traitor?_

He remembered Axel grabbing for his arm, back in the tattoo parlor…

" _And you're just as good a judge as I am, right, Moonboy?_ "

"You're on," he told Yuffie, "let's do it."

"Really?" she clasped her hands together like a little girl on Christmas morning, "Oh, _yes_! You won't regret it, I promise. We'll be just the _best_ team, I know it."

"Okay, okay," Saix waved briefly to the side, trying and failing to suppress a grin, "let's settle down a little, we're looking for a fugitive, not going on vacation."

"You say that _now_. I can't remember the last time I got to get out of town." Yuffie pushed her cleared plate away, getting up to her feet, "I'd better drop by the station, clear things with dispatch"

"I'll go with you," Saix told her, rising as well, "It wouldn't look too good if your new partner flaked on the first day, would it?"

Yuffie mouthed the word ' _partner_ ' to herself in ill-disguised jubilation, "Of course! But…um…" she indicated the towel around his waist, "it wouldn't look too good if my new partner wasn't wearing any pants."

Saix had nearly forgotten. Blushing, he adjusted the towel, "Yeah…um…give me a few minutes. I'll be right out with you."

"It's a deal!" she winked, practically skipping out of the apartment, "We'll take my car, I parked on Allwine and Anselmo."

"Gotcha," Saix waved her off, considering winking back at her, in some show of comradery, but she'd gone out the door before he could decide whether or not it was the right thing to do.

Sighing, Saix went to his room to find a pair of jeans more suitable to dropping by the station.

 _You're really doing it. You're really going after him._

He might have laughed if it wasn't all so disturbing.

As he wrestled his way into a pair of crisp gray jeans, Saix's eyes fell on the two articles on his dresser: the half-filled glass of water, and the plastic bottle with the typed label.

 _Figures. You remember every day like clockwork, until you get a VIP invite to your past, and it all goes out of your head._

He examined his reflection in the mirror above the dresser, emptying two chalky white tablets from the bottle into his hand, and downing them with the aid of the lukewarm water.

Afterward, he took a deep breath, letting his hand fall back to the worn wooden surface of the dresser.

He could still see the outline of the moon on his wrist, if he squinted. God, he'd been young, so young, so stupid, so naïve…

But Ax had been too, and none of those things had ever seemed to bother him any.

"Well, come on," he told his reflection with a tired smile, "It's Homeward Bound for you."

* * *

Selphie supposed she had to admit that, refreshing as waking up with a guy on either side of you could be, sitting between two guys in a cramped, fusty minivan on an unpleasantly moist autumn afternoon was not at all so exotic.

"It feels like I've said this a thousand times," she said, crossing her legs if only to make Tidus jostle his hips anxiously on her left, "But the world is _really_ a really tiny place, isn't it?"

"Perhaps closer to two thousand," Kairi's Gran muttered dryly from the front passenger seat, "Celeste, dear, could you open one of these windows? The girl is determined to consume all the air in this car."

Celeste obliged with a tired smile. From what Selphie had observed since their uncomfortable renewed acquaintanceship, tired smiles were the only smiles she was capable of.

Sober, that is.

"Are you sure you guys wanna do lunch at Cid's?" Celeste eyed them in the rearview mirror, "Morty's is right down this…"

"No!" said Zack, maybe too quickly. Hell, if it wasn't for the seatbelt, he probably would have conked that noggin of his on the ceiling, "I mean…no. No, Cid's is fine."

"Watching your diet, are you, Zacharias?" Gran apparently was ignorant of Zack's burger-flipping day job. Or she was very good at playing dumb.

"The diet of champions, obviously, Gran," Selphie came to the tongue-tied Zack's rescue, "Burgers and fries never saved a lady from tripping on the sidewalk."

Gran pursed her lips sourly, but rolled her eyes, an expression Selphie had learned many years ago meant she had given up, but would probably make _tres_ delicate remarks to Kairi about her taste in friends later.

That may not be so easy this time, though, Selphie thought with a little sinking feeling.

Tidus seemed to have decided to jump in, "Yeah, you know Morty's just _lubes_ all their stuff in lard. Like, even the salad…"

"Ahem," Selphie gave him a little kick in the shin, prompting a muffled curse.

"No, it's alright…" Zack shrugged at her other side, "…it's true."

Well. The memory of hundreds of chicken salads came floating into Selphie's consciousness. Not pretty at all.

Tidus, grimacing, gave Zack a thumbs up, as if in thanks. Good that they were getting along, at any rate, Selphie thought. Maybe Ti was thinking about what Selphie had, maybe histrionically, told him back at Morty's the other day.

Friends were important, and it was a bitch move leaving someone out of the loop, when they so much wanted to be included. Selphie had learned that lesson herself, with Kairi. Why not let Tidus have a Y chromosome equivalent?

"So…" Zack started, in a more sotto voice, the best to keep matron and crone (Selphie was glad to say she was the Maiden in this equation) from overhearing, "…you two. I didn't know you guys were a thing."

Selphie felt Tidus's eyes on her and, though she wouldn't look back at him for propriety's sake, she could still picture the little grin on his face.

The number of times she'd wanted to smack that grin right off him, and now the thought of it filled her with such an indescribable, stupid happiness that he may as well have been a different person.

But that wasn't it, was it? He was the _same_ person, the _same_ Tidus, and maybe a part of her had always wanted to kiss that grin off of him as much as she wanted to slap it.

 _Ooh, you should start writing drugstore romances! You're more hot and heavy than those forty-something year old has-beens at any rate._

"Who said we are?" asked Tidus with a put-upon imperiousness, but at Selphie's look of exasperation, he sighed with a shrug.

"I mean, you've gotta define a _thing_ first, 'cause..."

"We know each other really well," Selphie butted in, "And we are just now getting to know each other better. It's really neat."

"Neat." repeated Tidus, "Yeah, it is that. _Super_ neat."

Selphie felt his hand on the small of her back and she almost bucked like a wild mule right into him. He was, slowly but surely, getting used to her. She could only remember fleeting, hysterical snatches of last night, but she knew he'd been as careful with her as if he were afraid she'd blow up in his face at the first chance.

She remembered the backseat of a taxi (either Wakka hadn't been home when they called, or Tidus decided that the sight of them together would be enough to make Wakka pretend he was a mature adult with 'perspectives' or whatever), her head lolling on his shoulder.

Lingering on her doorstep, Tidus had seemed to want to get away, maybe go home. She'd never known him to be so embarrassed, if that was what he was.

" _Come on, stay with me,_ " she recalled herself saying, still shivering from the chill of the night and the cold wetness of the fountain water, " _You can't go home all wet, you'll catch your death._ "

" _You can't catch your death._ "

" _It's an idioticsm_ , _genius,_ " she'd already put her hand on the knob, to open the door, " _I can show you the flashcards when we get in..._ crud."

At which point she'd realized her house key was in her clutch, and she must have left that behind.

" _Well,_ now _what do we do?_ " she remembered asking him. And Tidus had smirked that clever little smirk of his again, nodding to the living room window, the same one through which he'd spied Riku and Sora at each others' throats it, what felt like ages ago.

" _You are_ not _suggesting..._ "

" _Suggestions waste time_ ," he gave a light tap on the window, and the latch came undone, effortlessly, " _Me, I'm a man of action._ "

Selphie never would have guessed breaking into her own home would feel so daring.

"If that's...you know, not weird or anything," Selphie looked up from her reverie, noting Tidus leaning over her to speak to Zack, whose ears turned a hearty shade of Pepto Bismol pink right quick.

"W-weird? Why would it be weird?"

"Yes, Ti," said Selphie tersely, "Why would it?"

"I mean...like..." Tidus was either genuinely confused or he was trying method acting for the first time and finding himself most unsuited, "Sora and Kairi." Selphie noted he hushed the two names down, as if to speak them too loudly in the presence of their elders in the car might cause some sort of episode.

"What about them?"

"It was weird for me, sometimes...like, when they started going out. Kai was always there before, you know, it wasn't like she just came from out of nowhere. But, still, everything felt a little...screwy."

It sometimes amazed Selphie, the poetic scope that boys could achieve.

"The way you talk about it, Sora and Kairi might've been humping on every street corner."

"What was that?" asked Gran sharply.

"Allergies!" chirped Selphie, loudly enough to elicit a muted sigh from Celeste behind the wheel.

"I thought it was really cute, how they just got together like that."

Selphie had known for years that Kairi harbored some secret torch for Sora. She never _said_ it, of course she didn't. Kairi didn't believe in such 'demeaning' things as gossip, she seemed to think it was insulting to do it.

But Selphie might have told Kairi that gossip is very different from _feelings_. Kairi liked Sora, and Selphie couldn't blame her. There _was_ a reason she'd always pushed to make Sora Sonny to her Cher back in the talent show days.

He was fun, and adventurous. Good looking too, though not _sexy_ , or anything. Not that Selphie had much of a concept of sexy at nine years old, exempting the occasional accidental foray into Wakka's secret magazine collection.

And Sora was a good guy, too. That counted a lot, especially for someone like Kairi, Selphie imagined, who'd had a lifetime of being either shat on or outright ignored by just about everyone.

"Took him long enough to figure out she was into him, though," mused Tidus, seizing on the opportunity to turn this convo as far from him as possible, clearly.

"Oh, love is complicated," Selphie leaned against the back of the seat, her eye falling back on Zack, "You know what?"

"W-what?"

"You need someone too," Selphie decided.

The Pepto infusion had by now spread across Zack's entire face down to his Adam's apple, "U...I do? I...um...I really, I..."

"You're a good catch!" Selphie playfully swatted Tidus on the collarbone, "Ti, tell him what a good catch he is."

"Selph, maybe now's not the time for the lovematch routine, I think you're slowly killing him."

" _Softly_ killing him," she corrected, turning back to Zack, "It's so unfair. You're a nice guy, you work, which is more than can be said of _some_ people..."

"Football is very time-consuming," put in Tidus, miffed.

"Well, it's a good thing you've got the rest of the season off," Selphie put in, glad to see the nerve of the lost division wasn't quite as raw as it had been before the rest of their world went topsy turvy.

"We have to set you up!" she looked from Tidus to Zack and back again, "Come on, it'll be a fun distraction."

"You know what?" Tidus shrugged, "Selph's got a point."

 _Ooh, this relationship stuff is much easier than Mother makes it sound._

They hadn't even needed to rent a hotel room yet.

"Teamie's prerogative," Tidus pointed at Zack, while Selphie marveled at his knowledge of the word 'prerogative', "And I think I still owe you for the extra fries."

"Oh, the fries were nothing, really, you don't have to..."

"Dude," Tidus put on a stage whisper, as if that could keep Selphie from overhearing him, "She isn't gonna give up, so I suggest you do as she commands."

Selphie elbowed him in the ribs, in good spirits.

"Well, now that _that's_ been settled...come on! Do we have to start polling subjects from the ground up, or do you have your eye on a special someone already? Doesn't matter _how_ unattainable she may seem, I have a very special way with these kinda things..."

She caught Tidus shaking her clutch back and forth over her shoulder, and snatched it from his hand with a dirty look.

"There are more tasteful ways to convince people. Bonus point: you're naturally charming, which saves me a helluva lot of trouble."

"Don't think anyone's ever called me 'charming' before," said Zack, chewing his lower lip anxiously.

"Well, no better time to get them started!" Selphie leaned forward, "Now come on, String the Second: what's your game, and does she have a name?"

Zack opened his mouth, averting his eyes, and was probably about to stammer some more uneven gobbledygook, were it not for the sudden intervention of Celeste pulling the minivan into park outside the low, wood-paneled building that was their local homestyle steakhouse.

"We're here!" she announced unnecessarily, unlocking the car so they could get out, "Amphitrite, do you need some..."

"On it!" and Zack had already bounded out of the car to hurry around to Gran's side, where he rushed to help her to her feet.

"Looks like we found his type," quipped Tidus, opening the door on his side and stepping out, extending his hand to help Selphie out after him.

"Oh, stop it," she giggled, taking the offered hand gratefully, "I think it's very sweet that he likes to help people."

"That why you wanna help him?" Tidus closed the door behind them, wrapping his arm around Selphie's shoulder, to her ill-disguised delight, "Pay back kindness with kindness?"

"Why not? I'm sick of seeing good people treated like doormats all the time. It isn't fair."

"No," he shook his head, "It's frigging screwed up."

"I can't remember the last time I actually _ate_ here," Celeste told them as they crossed the parking lot.

"Is the employee discount that pitiful?" asked Gran, who was doing a masterful job pretending Zack wasn't clinging to her arm as if she might fall over with a badly-timed breeze.

"It always seemed kind of strange, you know, eating at work on a day off," Celeste replied, "You know, I _work_ with these people, I wouldn't want to seem like some demanding customer..."

"You worry too much what others think," Gran pronounced, "Zacarias's mother is the same."

"Oh. She is?" asked Zack.

"Yes, and you can tell her I said that. She's heard it enough from me before, _and_ she knows I don't care if it upsets her. But it doesn't, because she's a reasonable and intelligent woman."

Celeste smiled sort of pityingly at Zack, quickening her pace so as to get to the front door before Gran could further embarrass her trusty little helper as much as she clearly thought he was embarrassing her.

Selphie, however, was armed with enough social machinations to know several other ways to keep this situation from turning into as much of an uncomfortable minstrel show as the incident at the Dalman club.

 _Look at you: more socially prepared than an ancient grandma_ and _a harried 30+ soccer mom! Womanhood ain't seen nothin' yet._

"You know, all these years Kairi and I have been like _this_ ," she twisted her index and middle fingers around each other to illustrate sorority, "I never knew her people knew _your_ people, Zack!"

"It's really more my folks," said Zack, "Y'see, we live on the same block and..."

"More than that," Gran cut him off, "Zacharias's mother used to work for my husband, at the company," she pronounced _company_ with a sourness so poignant she may have meant it as a curse. Selphie realized that, on whatever few occasions Gran did mention her husband's old job in front of her, it was with the same affect.

"Brilliant mind, and mind you there weren't a lot of women involved in that profession back then. She took her leave of absence, though, but I've always kept in touch. She was very kind to me, after..."

"Geez, Cel," a loud, grating, but not unkind voice, "What do I have to do to keep ya from showing up here?"

They had, apparently without realizing it, not moved into the front vestibule of the restaurant, and now the middle-aged, grossly-aproned proprietor was emerging from the back to see to them, leathery face split into a grin.

"Don't panic, I'm not sneaking in a shift," Celeste told him, "Is it too much to ask for a table for five?"

Cid looked from Celeste to the rest of their group.

"Hello, again," said Gran dryly, "My friend seems to think it would be inappropriate of her to eat here, but after meeting you, I'm sure we can all change our definitions of 'inappropriate'."

"That's the spirit," said Cid with a forced air of spirit, nodding over to a booth halfway to the back of the place, "Make yourselves cozy."

"Oh, Cid..." Celeste grabbed gently onto his shoulder as the rest of them started walking past, "I was wondering, has..."

But Selphie and the others had gone out of earshot before Selphie could finish eavesdropping.

"Here we are," Gran announced, sliding into the booth, closest to the wall, "Zacharias, please don't feel obliged to sit next to me. There is absolutely no need."

Zack, getting the idea, walked back around to the other side of the table, sitting next to Selphie, who was sitting next to Tidus.

"It really was nice of her to take us out to lunch," Selphie began, flipping through the menu, "I just wanted my bag back..."

"She appreciates your company," Amphitrite explained, her eyes running up and down her own menu with a vague scowl etched into the lines of her face, "More than mine, I think. But I can't blame her. I think she finds me a bit of a chore to put up with."

"I know what that's like!" said Selphie, "A lot of people think _I'm_ a chore, too, but really, I think they appreciate when I care about them."

"Yes, that's what I tell myself too," Amphitrite's eye lingered on Zack maybe an extra second longer. Selphie wondered if she really _had_ been oblivious to their discussion in the backseat after all.

Celeste arrived at the booth with a smile, taking her seat next to Amphitrite, "Sorry about that. I just wanted to make sure..."

"Welcome to Cid's," a chirpy, spirited voice as an overpowering scent of flowery perfume wafted over to them, "May I take your order?"

"Aerith," Celeste smiled, abashed, up at the reasonably-pretty, flower-adorned waitress standing over them, "Hey. I didn't mean for Cid to send you over..."

"Don't blame Cid, I volunteered," she looked around at the rest of them, "Good to see you, though." she hesitated, as if wanting to say something, looking sort of apologetic. But either personal embarrassment or determined professionalism kept her from saying it aloud.

"So, what will it..." her gaze rested in its circuit of the table, "Oh," an uncertain smile spread over her face, "Zack?"

Selphie turned to Zack, at the same time feeling Tidus almost colliding with her, his head whipped around so quickly.

Zack appeared almost frozen in his seat, face vacant, as if he'd just seen a ghost.

"...Aerith? Um...wow," he smiled, nervously, "Long time, no see, right?"

"And the world keeps shrinking!" Selphie observed.

"You two know each other?" Celeste wondered, bemused.

"Kinda," said Zack, "But it's been a while."

"It has," Aerith didn't look entirely bothered, but her fingers had tensed around her little waitressing pad, "Last time I saw you, you were barely up to my side."

Tidus made some weird snorting sound which he hastily attempted to disguise by taking a sip of water. Selphie kicked him under the table, which only served to make more of a mess, spilling water everywhere.

"Aw, crap!" she said for Tidus' benefit, " _So_ sorry..."

"Oh, no it's alright," said Aerith hastily, "Let me get you more napkins from the back..."

"I can help you," Celeste was already half standing.

"No, no, it's fine..." she was already walking off, "You stay put, it's your day off."

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. At length, Amphitrite said, "Heavens," very clearly, which seemed to be her only comment on the whole thing.

"Sorry!" Tidus coughed, pushing his emptied glass away, "Sorry, about that...I...sorry."

"No, it's fine," Zack had traded the Pepto look for radishes, Selphie observed, "I...wasn't expecting that."

"Aerith and I work together," Celeste said awkwardly, "I didn't know..."

"I never knew her too well," explained Zack, "Just...uh...she used to date my brother, that's all."

"Your brother?" Celeste repeated, her eyes lighting up as though she were putting the pieces of some puzzle together.

Amphitrite made some sort of old woman clucking noise, and Celeste seemed to get the idea these were dangerous waters she was treading.

Tidus, however, was deaf to such cluckings, "I never knew you had a brother! He went to Destiny High?"

"He did," Zack shrugged, and Selphie noticed an odd, quiet cast come over his face, "But he left town a while ago."

"Oh," Tidus leaned back in his seat, falling back into uncomfortable silence.

Zack was drumming his fingers against the table, Selphie saw. Up close, she noticed he must bite his nails. A new sort of anxiety had taken over him, like he was afraid one of them would say something.

Selphie supposed she had to, "You know, this Waldorf salad thingy looks really good. What do you think, Zack?"

"What? Oh..." Zack leaned over to look at the menu alongside her, "Okay, so you'll have to explain what that is first?"

"Oh, well that's easy..." Selphie started prattling about walnuts, grapes and iceberg lettuce. She lost track of what she was saying pretty quickly, but Zack seemed to be distracted too.

Aerith returned to their table in due course, though, and took their orders. She and Zack seemed determined to be nothing but cordial to each other. Maybe there was no bad blood between them, but there was _something_.

Selphie wouldn't pry, though. Totally counterproductive to her Zack-improvement mission.'

 _But it really is funny, though, how connected everybody is. Even if they don't know it_.

It was a good kind of feeling, though. Selphie had never been aware of it so much until today, how good it was that they all shared the same story, whether they knew it or not.

* * *

 **A/N:** So...Chapter 12 may disrupt the update schedule, I've realized. It's a kind of monster chapter, the first one since Chapter 3 that will have more than four scenes...this one will have six, so I'm already anticipating it will be the longest chapter yet.

I do hope to have it done by next Friday, October 7, but if I don't, definitely expect it by the 14th! Any later than that, and you can send out the missing persons squad.

Until then, guys...and thanks, again, for sticking with _Radiant Creatures_ as long as you have!


	12. Labors of Hercules

Chapter 12, Labors of Hercules

 **A/N:** So...this is _much_ later than two weeks, so huge apologies for that. I've just been kinda swamped lately, but I've tried to find time for _Radiant Creatures_ as often as I could these past several weeks. It didn't help that this chapter is very long, with six scenes and a lot of content.

However, I do hope there is enough content to make up for my time away. I know I really enjoyed how a lot of this chapter came out, so I hope you do too.

One note before you start, though. Events in this chapter _are_ more or less sequential, as every other chapter has been. As in, things happen one after another, in a normal chronological order. However, as you go on, expect to see some scenes running against each other, which events that happened earlier in one scene not effecting a later scene till about halfway through or so. The entire Underworld story has been a very intricate web, and I hope a lot of it starts coming together in this chapter.

Of course, a side affect of that is that things begin crossing over with each. I've reread this chapter several times, and I think I've made it as unconfusing as possible. _You're_ the final judge of that, though.

Happy reading!

* * *

The only sound in the crawlspace was a steady dripping of water. Regular as clockwork, _drip, drip, drip_ , with barely a second between. The noise did not get any louder or softer the farther along Riku and Ariel went; it just kept on, coming from no particular direction, just existing as if it had always been a part of this place, a part of the Underworld.

 _Drip, drip, drip_ … Riku had recovered himself for the most part, he thought. The memory of Bluebird, hunched into the corner and screaming, sobbing at him was still raw, but it seemed now to have happened in some weird, fever dream. Somehow, in the grand scope of fucked-up things that had happened to Riku the last few days, Bluebird seemed a uniquely _unreal_ sort of fucked-up thing.

 _Drip, drip, drip…_ Ariel had been right to usher him out of there, he could see that now. Not even the two of them together could have managed to get a hysterical, unwilling woman out of that room, much less through the air vent.

He had to forget about it. There were God knows how many sorry unfortunates in this place, Riku had no doubt.

 _You can't save everyone, so focus on saving the ones you_ need _to save. The ones_ you _put in danger. Spare the hero complex._

But the guilt was still there. Riku could feel it like a tangible presence, thudding along with his heart, with the dripping of the water, with his own ragged breaths and Ariel's determined grunts of effort as they continued, on hands and knees, deeper into the darkness, a looping soundtrack to offset the constancy of the unchanging world they were getting deeper and deeper into.

 _Drip, thud, drip, thud, breathe, breathe, thud, drip, drip, thud…_

He had to give Ariel credit, she was taking this whole last-minute bid for freedom much better than he was. With every turn the tunnel took, every slight widening of the passage, she seemed to become more at ease, turning over her shoulder more often, to nod at him, give him a reassuring smile.

 _She's been here three months. Probably just waiting for a chance to get out._

But Riku was not so much of an idiot as to pat himself on the back for this. If any of Heaven's Most Beautiful Souls could just escape their forebodingly-perfumed prison through an air vent, there wouldn't be any Beautiful Souls left.

But they had to press on, to wherever this led. They were in it now, and if going on was dangerous, turning back was just stupid.

 _Drip, thud, drip, thud, breathe, breathe, thud, drip, drip…_

Ariel stopped short in the passage, so abruptly that Riku barely had time to stop himself.

"What is it?" he asked her, his voice sounding oddly muffled, rather than magnified in the cramped space, "What's wrong?"

She turned back to him, pressing her finger over her lips, cocking her head upward. So Riku shut up, listened, and this time he heard: a short, but resounding slam, as of a door being quickly opened and quickly shut.

Footsteps, pounding on gravel, seeming to shake the world around them. The dripping quickened, and Riku's breath quickened with it.

The walkers were right over their heads, with maybe less than a foot of stone separating them.

Ariel looked again at Riku, a plain question in her eyes. Riku was just debating how to answer it, when one of the walkers above them spoke.

"I'm going to tell you again: don't lie to me."

Riku tensed at the strange, cold passion of the words, remembering when he'd heard them last. A still more familiar voice gave reply, "You know how many times I coulda lied to you today, already?"

"More or less, but it's a bitch keeping track," there was about as much humor in Squall's voice as there always was, "Where are we going?"

"Visiting a friend, I told you."

"Yeah, and it sounds worse and worse every time you say it." The footsteps paused, just above where Riku and Ariel were huddled.

"He's fine; owes me a few favors," Seifer's laugh was laced with the same smug slyness he often employed against Riku and Axel. Like he was years older than them and knew better unconditionally, even if he never wanted to explain just _how_ he did.

"I'm game if you wanna wait for his birth certificate and physical, but that's probably gonna take some time, and you're in a pretty big hurry…"

"What I want to know is how it is you have friends in the Coliseum?" the question was low, guttural, seething with a barely restrained fury.

"I have friends everywhere."

"Cut the crap. And don't give me that B.S about how you really hate this place, honor among thieves…forget it. You were just telling me how you can't stand the place, but you've got friends there who…"

"Ain't room for feelings in this game, Leon," Seifer hissed, "Sometimes you gotta put your personal shit behind. For the greater good." Another laugh, "That's why you're here, right? The greater good?"

A short silence, "You know, if you're trying to convince me you've embraced the path of peace, love and understanding, you're wasting your time. And we don't have a lot of that."

"Just what I was trying to tell ya! Now, come on. Games start in an hour and my guy's a busy man."

The footsteps moved on, receding softly into the distance. Riku realized he'd been holding his breath, and let out a shaky gasp, his ribs aching.

"So much for mortal enemies," he muttered, almost to himself.

Noting Ariel's questioning look as she continued down the passage, Riku explained, "Bad blood between those two. Pretty messed up stuff; kind of a legend with my…um…where I'm from."

Ariel opened her mouth, almost as if she wanted to speak, but winced, as if remembering. The passage was slowly widening out around them now, so they could both begin rising to a crouching position.

Riku caught the look on her face a little better as she rose. It was something like fear, but with an undercurrent of something else…recognition.

"What, you know them?"

She shook her head, hesitated, than held up her index finger, her meaning clear: _No. One._

And she didn't look too pleased about it either. Recalling that he had seen both his chapter president _and_ his favorite DPD officer come out of her place of unwilling employment, Riku fought back a shivering feeling.

Squall…Leon, whatever…didn't seem like the type, but…

"Seifer?" he asked it tentatively, as though afraid of the answer.

Ariel nodded, a dark cast coming over her face.

"I'm sorry," though he wasn't sure why he was apologizing, "I mean…I hope he didn't…"

But Ariel shook her head again, her mouth twitching, as though she was confused herself. She wrapped her arms around herself, cold, and went on.

Feeling he was more or less obligated to explain himself to her at this point, Riku continued, "Seifer's...not really a friend, or anything...but we go back a little bit. He's a dick, really."

Ariel let out when of those muted chuckles that passed for laughter with her, heartening Riku as they moved on.

 _Well, if she's able to laugh about it, he couldn't have done anything_ that _bad to her,_ Riku mused, _Right?_

Not that he would put hitting up whorehouses outside the realm of possibility for Seifer, but he'd always been more inclined to showboaty displays of authority, his own skewed idea of machismo, rather than actual violence.

" _Y'see, he acts like the King of the Hill to keep us all nice and lined up,_ " Axel had told Riku, the day after his initiation, " _But he won't ever_ do _anything to you._ "

" _Why not? Too nice?_ "

" _Too soft. Our Glorious Leader's let himself go since he Came Back From the Dead._ "

Riku still remembered the hysterical laugh Axel had made after that one, looking at Riku's expression of bewilderment, confusion...even the fear that, maybe, he hadn't made the right decision here.

But now it appeared Seifer had gone back _to_ to the Dead, to help out his old enemy. Or was it the other way around?

"The other guy...Leonhart," Riku shrugged, "Still kinda up in the air about him, really. Cops, you know?"

Ariel made some sort of dismissive noise, but before Riku could gauge what exactly she meant by that, they rounded another corner in the passage, and a dry, yet surprisingly refreshing breeze blew into their faces.

Ariel looked back at him, her face split into an eager grin.

"That's good," Riku told her, maybe unnecessarily, "we must be getting close to…"

But Ariel was already way ahead of him, hurrying down the way, stepping carefully on bare, scarred feet, to where the passage terminated, blocked off by a row of thin iron bars, like the ones on a sewer grate, or the window of a prison cell.

"…the way out." He sighed, coming up alongside her.

The bars were firmly affixed in the stone, and did nothing more than echo disquieting when Riku tried shaking them.

Ariel had gotten up on tiptoes, peering through the slits in the grate. The area beyond was hidden in shadow, but it didn't seem to be a continuation of these damp sewer tunnels.

"Over there," Riku followed Ariel's gaze to the outline of horizontal lines crisscrossing the ceiling of the next room, "Wires, I think. For lights, maybe...some kind of generator." an idea struck him, "Wait! Yeah, that's it, maybe if..."

Ariel, again, seemed to have already gotten the idea. Like a shot, she reached one skinny, porcelain-skinned arm through a slit in the two bars closest to the right end of the grate (it just barely fit, where Riku's would probably have been stuck) and began feeling up and down the wall on the other side.

"Good idea," Riku told her, "Now, if you find the..."

A little clang, as of a tiny shutter opening. Ariel looked at him expectantly, and Riku smiled to reassure her, craning his neck so he could get a better look at the little steel case in the wall Ariel had discovered.

"...fuse box. Good. Okay, so we're looking for..." he wracked his head, trying to remember exactly the layout of the fusebox down at the bike shop. He'd been along with Axel enough times, trying to patch up his old monster, that he'd gotten a good idea of the works.

"...like a little knob, not a switch. For valves. Sometimes there's fail safes, to open these things..." he slapped his hand lightly against one of the bars, "You know, in case a couple of poor suckers get stuck behind one 'of em."

Ariel made a low humming sound that may have been an amused titter, if she only had a tongue to make the actual noise. Her lip between her teeth, she moved her hand up and down in the box, as if carefully testing each thing she came across.

And then, at last, a rusty creak as Ariel let out a groan of effort, looking to Riku as if for validation.

"Well..." Riku began, looking at the grate, "...you must've done _some_..."

The grille shook like the pipes of an organ, producing a reverberating clang that echoed the whole way down the passage behind them.

Riku had the presence of mind to pull the startled Ariel out of the way of the grate as it began to pull up from the ground, sprinkling chunks of gravel on the ground as it did.

Ariel stared up at her accomplishment, beaming like she'd just won a beauty pageant, amazed at her own achievement.

"Huh," Riku patted Ariel on the shoulder, "Good job."

She brushed his hand off her shoulder gently, a faint rosy tinge coming into her cheeks,

He followed her through the newly opened archway into the room beyond, and turned his attention at once to the fusebox.

Riku may have had reservations about turning on the lights in this place, were it not for the fact that anyone for miles in either direction could have heard the noise the grate made when it opened. Might as well have some light to see them coming, if they did.

There were three switches in a row, each one flipped to 'off', but none of them were labeled otherwise.

Riku noticed Ariel hovering over his shoulder, anxious.

"What?" he looked back at her, "Better safe than sorry. One of them could have a broken fuse, or something, and then what would we..."

Ariel reached past him, flipping the top switch decisively. Somewhere nearby, a low electrical hum sounded, as shoddily protected electrical bulbs flickered to life along the walls of the room.

Ariel crossed her arms, smiling smugly. Riku rolled his eyes, "Fine. You win. Now..." he turned to have a look around the spare, brick-walled room, taking in a few bland details: workbench, empty shelves, sold steel door that may or may not be locked...

"No way..." he breathed, his eyes falling on something that promptly erased any other speculation about the room from his mind.

"What the hell is..." he crossed over to the motorcycle's side in two quick strides, quickly crouching down to look it over, examine the dust on its sides, the minor wear and tear on the tires.

The glovebox was unlocked, and Riku waste no time flipping it open to rummage inside. Almost immediately, his hand closed around the crumpled up plastic bag, and he felt a happy sort of weight descend on his gut.

"Good vibrations," he read from the scrawled note, holding the bag of condoms up the light, "I'm supposed to thank him later."

Ariel was looking down at him like he'd just grown a second head, cocking an eyebrow at the bag in his hand. Feeling suddenly self conscious, Riku shook his head, "It's not...uh...what you think. My...friend, he's got a weird sense of..."

Ariel gave the side of the bike a little nudge with her foot, looking pointedly at him.

"Oh. Yeah," Riku lifted himself back to his feet, shoving the bag back into the glovebox with one hand, letting the other gently caress the well-worn leather of the seat, "This is Betty."

Ariel mouth the name, her eyes twinkling with mixed mirth and disbelief.

"Yeah...she's mine. I mean, _it's_ mine. My friend, he calls her... _it_ , he calls it Betty..."

Ariel rolled her eyes in some universally girlish language for the silly attitudes of boys. Riku kept looking the bike up and down, glad to find it in reasonably good condition, considering his last ride on it had ended like a particularly violent Road Safety PSA.

"Maleficent never had it, then," he muttered to himself, checking the gas tank, the exhaust pipe, the headlight, "Hades' guys must've figured they'd ransom the whole package. Or keep it for them..."

He trailed off, noticing something bunched up, like an old dishrag, between the handlebars. His pulse quickening, Riku held the thing up, rolling it to reveal a black wool cap...a skullcap, complete with an actual skull, sewn into the front in white thread, like some juvenile expression of toughness.

"The son of a bitch," the words came through his lips, hushed yet heated, "It was _him_. The whole time, it was him..."

He should've known, the moment he saw them get into that Bentley outside the Grotto. But Leonhart couldn't _know_ , could he? He couldn't actually...

Ariel grabbed at his forearm, jerking her head insistently toward the door.

"What?" Riku asked her at once, jarred from his ruminations, "What is..."

But he heard it now, too. Footsteps, moving purposefully down the hall, voices growing steadily clearer. Familiar voices.

Ariel was tugging on his arm, as if to get him to move, to hide, to get away before they were caught. Probably a sensible thing to do, Riku didn't doubt...

But something in him, some deeper conviction, was telling him to stand his ground, that the time for hiding was over, now that he'd found Betty, now that he knew who was responsible for all of this.

 _Sorry, Ax, but you were wrong. He's just as dangerous as he was before, he just doesn't show it._

Which somehow made the whole thing much worse.

"Jeez, man, can't you stop bitching me around for a change?" the handle on the door began to turn from the other side, "Yeah, he don't look like much, but that's the _point_ ain't it? It's all about appearances..."

The door swung open, and there they both stood, blinking dazedly, surprised by the light compared to whatever dark corridor they'd just come out from.

"What the hell...?" Seifer held a hand to his face, letting his eyes adjust.

Before Riku even knew entirely what he was doing, he had decided on an action, reaching into his pocket and drawing the silver-plate pistol, training it on the two startled men in the doorway with both hands.

"Hey," he greeted them in a low voice, aware of a faint tremor in his hands, hoping against hope _they_ didn't notice.

"R-Riku?" Riku couldn't tell if Seifer was surprised or genuinely frightened, but he didn't much care, "What are you doing down here?"

"I was just about to ask you the same question," he looked over at Leonhart standing to Seifer's left, his face stern and impassive as ever, though maybe with an extra touch or two more of irritation, "So, you here to arrest me or him, Detective? I was kind of under the impression you two don't talk much anymore."

"So much for 'too stupid to come down here'," Leonhart looked at Seifer out of the corner of his eye, taking a slow step aside of him, closer to Riku and Ariel, "Put down the gun, kid."

"Kid?" Riku looked from him back to Seifer, "What, you thought _I_ was stupid? Classic, Seifer...you wanna know what's stupid?" he reached back from the skullcap with one hand, dangling it so Seifer could see, "Leaving your stuff with the stolen goods."

"You took his _bike_ too?" Squall demanded.

"So you _know_ he's the one who chased us in the tunnel?" Riku let out a humorless laugh, more exasperated than anything else.

"He admitted to it, and taking Sora down here," Squall didn't sound happy about it,.

"Oh yeah?" Riku took another step forward, feeling a slight thrill as Squall stepped back from him, "Of course it was you...I should've thought of it sooner."

"Look, Riku," Seifer took another step back, "I can explain, man, alright? Just..."

"You will. Axel went to you that night, got my bike back...you knew I was breaking out the whole time, so of course you beelined to stop me. Why?"

"I'm told it's nothing personal," said Squall.

"'Course it wasn't," Riku shook his head, "Sora was a stranger to you, you took him anyway. That's not personal, that's just fucking cold-blooded. Gotta say, Seifer, Axel may have been wrong about you."

"Tell me about it," Seifer had dropped the joking veneer.

"You're not some big-headed idiot on an ego trip..." he noticed Seifer lowering one hand to his belt, spotted a glimpse of a leather grip, "You're just a cold son of a bitch who only cares about himself."

"It's more complicated than that, Riku," Seifer's hand was closing around the knife in his belt, as if he sincerely believed Riku couldn't see him.

"Great. You can tell me all about it. Drop the knife, close the door."

Seifer froze, the knife already half drawn.

"Do what he says," Riku was surprised to see that Squall had stopped just off to the side, halfway between the two of them. He seemed to have finally noticed Ariel standing just behind Riku, looking at each of them with an abject confusion, but a steely determination all the same.

 _You just keep on dragging poor innocent schmucks into your messes, don't you?_ Riku chastised himself, _If anything happens to her, it's on you._

Maybe it was a good thing he hadn't gotten Bluebird out of that room too. He wouldn't like to think what would have become of her, unstable and hysterical as she was, in this standoff.

A clear thud signaled that Seifer had shut the door. Reluctantly, he kicked the knife across the floor to them.

Without any prompting, Ariel hurried forward and snatched up the knife, holding it somewhat awkwardly with two hands, like a broadsword, but aiming it at Squall's gut, as if in warning.

" _You_?" Seifer had noticed Ariel too by now, confusion palpable on his face.

"You're mixed up with this one too?" Squall demanded, taking the necessary steps back from Ariel, "What..." he paused, " 'Pre-existing business arrangement'."

Riku didn't know what he was talking about, but Ariel gave a curt half-nod, and Seifer groaned aggrievedly, moving away from the door, "I met her once, just last night. It was a private contract."

"The hell does that mean?" asked Riku, looking from Ariel to Seifer, "What, you sell girls off the books now? Extra revenue for the gang, what is this?"

"You're not gonna learn anything asking him, kid," Squall didn't look happy about it, "Believe me."

"Oh yeah? Maybe you didn't have much luck, but you weren't holding a gun on him."

"Yeah, go ahead, Riku...shoot me," Seifer spread his arms wide, "Shoot me, and your little friend never sees the light of day again."

"What is he talking about?"

Squall sighed, "He's agreed to help me get Sora out of here. Some arrangement with a friend of his."

"And you think he's telling the truth?" Riku looked at him, askance, "C'mon, man, you of all people should know you can't trust this guy for anything."

That had gotten to Squall, Riku could see the barest sign of a crack in that stony facade.

"So tell me, Seifer...you took Kairi, too? That some other 'contract'?"

"I already told this one," Seifer nodded sharply over at Squall, "I had nothin' to do with that..."

"Bullshit!" that same, single-minded, channeled anger he had felt when he'd last held this gun, in the front seat of Cruella's Duesenberg, was pumping through his veins, pounding in his ears. The world seemed to be shrinking around him, just Riku and the gun, and Seifer just a few feet from the barrel, pinned in place like a fly on a sheet of wax paper.

"It's true!" Seifer cried it out, desperately, "Dammit, Riku, this is bigger than you think, the world doesn't revolve around you!"

Riku lowered the gun, taking a step back, almost into Ariel. Seifer didn't seem to realize what he'd said, but Riku certainly did.

"Oh, believe me. That's very clear." he said softly, "You're not the first person to point it out."

Seifer's jaw went slack. He'd been trapped, and he knew it now.

"What are you talking about?" he heard Squall ask, as if from miles away.

"You were there, that night, at the Overlook," Riku continued, again advancing on Seifer, "Watching, listening...waiting for me to leave, or for Kairi...so you could take her."

"So you _were_ with her, that night," Squall sudden realization was stark enough that Riku may have laughed if this had been funny at all.

"And I wasn't the only one," Riku turned to look at Squall, "I didn't do anything to her." he rounded back on Seifer, "But this guy...it _was_ you, dammit. Just admit it."

It had become eerily quiet in the room. Seifer's arms had dropped to his sides, and his face was working...Riku could it see it, lies and truths fighting each other.

"Riku..." he began, his face turning some sickly gray color, like he was honestly about to be sick, "Riku, I..."

"Step away from the boy!" a shrill, keening voice echoed through the room and down the passage beyond as a new silhouette fell over them, "Step away from the boy, or so help me, I'll have that pretty skin of yours for gloves."

Seifer, who hadn't even been advancing on Riku to begin with, stepped off to the side as Riku, Squall and Ariel all turned to behold the newest addition to this rapidly growing mess.

" _Cruella?_ " Riku was so surprised he almost lowered the gun.

"And I'll be wanting _that_ little trinket as well, mind," she eyed the pistol in his hands.

The makeup around her eyes and the rouge on her face had all been smeared somehow, giving her a nightmarish, almost deathly quality. Her hair was mussed too, and her fur-lined jacket had been stained and torn in some places. She was covered here and there with spots of mud and niter, probably from crawling through the same sewer-spaces Riku and Ariel had just come out from.

She was still half shrouded in the shadows of the tunnel behind her, but Riku could plainly see her arms stretched out toward then, holding something in her hands, poised to fire.

"Not that I blame you for nicking it; God knows what these snakes would've done with it. Family heirloom, you know, and I'm losing more and more of those by the hour."

Squall was looking from Cruella to Riku with a confused exasperation, "Wait...I'm sorry, _who_ are you?"

"A lady, darling, and she's fallen on hard times. Now won't you _shut your spit-hole_ before I pop a cap in it?" she trained the instrument in her hands on him, "Perhaps I'll do for you _and_ the smart mouthed urchin over here..."

"Urchin?" Seifer somehow seemed more offended by that than by anything else, "Lady, you don't even..."

"A pair of nice leather boots, matching scars. I could move to New York, become an icon in my middle age." she cocked a barely-penciled eyebrow, producing an eerie, mannequin-like effect.

"Cruella," Riku tried again, "what's going on? How did you find me? Where's Jafar?"

She turned into the light, the better to regard him. Riku noticed for the first time a smudge of gaudy red near her hairline...half-dried blood from a recently opened wound.

"In reverse order: Off being useless, raw pioneer spirit, and how the the living hell do I know? Now come on, darling, or would you rather spend the rest of your days in this hellhole?"

Riku stood there, looking up at her, weighing his options. Not that Maleficent's chauffeur had seemed all too put-together when Riku had first met her, but her stint down here certainly didn't appear to have had any positive effect on her mental faculties.

"I think we'd _all_ like to get out of this hellhole," said Squall, "Believe it or not, I was looking for Riku too, to help him."

"Oh, were you? Then why are you all buddy-buddy with Lady Killer, over here?" she jerked her weapon to aim at Seifer again, "I was listening, I heard everything. Hell, I'll even keep quiet about it, if I have to...but I have a _job_ to do, and that job is to bring _this_..."

She reached out with a surprising suddenness, grabbing Riku's arm in a firm, pincer-like grip and pulling him close, "...strapping delinquent safely home."

"Cruella..." Riku began, struggling against her, "Cruella, I..."

A sudden start of movement off to the right, as Cruella grabbed for the pistol in Riku's hands, firing off a wild shot.

 _The last shot,_ Riku thought mournfully, though the thought was quickly dispelled as a flash of red hair staggered back, wide-eyed and panting against the wall.

"No!" he cried, trying to push away from Cruella's arms, but she was unrelenting.

"Perfectly alright, darling, I didn't _hit_ the dolly," Cruella may have been right, but Ariel did look sufficiently deterred, " _I_ don't go after innocent little girls. A life of good intentions and look where it got me."

Riku heard a clattering to the side. Cruella's original weapon had been dropped. In the new light, Riku realized it wasn't a gun at all, just her ebony cigarette holder. She'd been bluffing the whole time. Not that it mattered anymore.

She pointed the empty pistol at the other two men, "Now, bug off, the lot of you. I've about had it with this place."

"Lady, are you fucking _nuts_?" demanded Seifer.

"Boy, are you _bleeding_ deaf?" Cruella retorted, "Clear off, before I open a third ear for you."

"We can work together," Squall was inching slowly toward where Ariel was huddled against the wall, still trying to recover her breath, his hands up so Cruella could see he was unarmed, "The other missing boy, he's in the Coliseum fighting pits, we've got a plan to get him out..."

"Excellent for you! The other missing boy isn't my problem." Cruella gave Riku a little shove forward, "Come on, darling, get us going."

It took Riku a moment to realize she was talking about Betty, nodding toward the bike as if it were the most painfully obvious ticket out of this labyrinth.

"Look," Riku put a careful hand on one of Betty's handlebars, both for purchase and in case he needed a quick escape, "Cruella, I know you think you're doing your job, but Sora is down here, he's in trouble, and it's on me."

"I thought we established it's on _him_ ," Cruella looked back at Seifer.

Not wanting to, again, go into the details of how exactly Sora had gotten all caught up in this, Riku continued, "I came this far, I'm not getting out now."

"This isn't the time to play the hero, darling," Cruella came along behind him, prodding him in the back with the gun.

 _It's empty,_ Riku told himself, _it's empty and she doesn't know it. She can't hurt you._

He locked eyes with Ariel, still shrunk up against the wall. He thought of Kairi, of Bluebird, huddled in that tawdry nightgown, face glistening with who knew how many tears, accumulated over who knew how long.

 _You can't save everyone. Maybe you can't save_ anyone _. All you do is make things worse, ruin everyone else's lives._

Ariel's eyes stayed on him, wide but not vacant, not like Bluebird's. she was still there. Bluebird may not have known who he was or what he wanted, but Ariel did. She shook her head at him, slowly, yet not sadly.

"Well?" Cruella swung one leg up onto the seat, "Shall we? Before the hounds of hell decide to descend at last?"

"Fine," he said at last, moving to sit in front of Cruella, finding the key in the ignition where Seifer must have left it, "Let's go."

Cruella sighed tremendously, "At last, some reason in this place," she heaved one leather-clad leg up to come over onto the seat, "You better know what you're doing with this stinking…"

Riku gunned the engine, sending Betty forward at a sprint, fast enough to send Cruella almost falling backward onto the cement floor.

"Ariel!" he barked to the rapidly approaching flash of red hair, reaching out with one hand.

It occurred to Riku that this was the first time he'd said her name aloud. He wondered when was the last time she'd heard it spoken

But Ariel ignored the gesture, instead reaching out from her spot on the floor, to make for the fusebox.

"Wait!" Riku heard Squall cry out behind them, heard footsteps on the floor.

There was a click from the box, and Riku felt a whoosh of air as the bike passed out of the arch back into the sewer passage, promptly followed by the cacophonous clang of metal into stone. Ariel had shut the grille again, though whether it was to keep Riku and Cruella penned up with her, or to keep Squall and Seifer from chasing them, Riku wasn't sure.

"Dammit!" Squall must have reached the bars. Riku heard his cries, and some sort of snide comment from Seifer, but they were already fading out of earshot.

Riku could make out one last, defeated, "We can help each other!" before Detective Leonhart's voice faded entirely behind him.

"Well, that oughta keep them off for a nonce," remarked Cruella, her voice itching at Riku's ear, "Hang a right, love, there was some fancy looking lift sort of thing, not far from the hotel.'

Riku was full of questions. What had happened to Jafar, how Cruella had gotten away from him, how exactly she intended them to get out of here…never mind everything Seifer _hadn't_ said, about why he'd taken Kairi…hell, he hadn't even given a real admission of guilt, though Riku knew it must have been him.

"Who was the girl?" Cruella asked at length, apparently not immune to questions of her own.

Riku shook his head.

"Oh, indeed?" Cruella sighed wistfully, fingers digging uncomfortably into Riku's hips…she certainly wasn't as reluctant about it as Sora had been, at any rate, "Ships that pass in the night, is that it?"

"No," Riku didn't care how harsh he may sound, "I…I thought I could help her."

"Seems to me she didn't much want your help, darling. I wouldn't take it too personally. Oh, left here," she waved her hand dismissively at the next bend in the tunnel.

"Responsibility is a nifty little thing on its own," Cruella went on, "But, darling, if you _must_ hold yourself accountable for every shit thing that happens around you, you'll just be sweeping up messes your whole life long."

She let the matter rest there, going on giving Riku incidental, often vague, directions. Riku still couldn't turn his head away from it all though.

 _But they're_ your _messes. Ariel, Bluebird, Kairi, Sora..._

And he'd left them all. The ones already suffering, and the ones whose lives had been just peachy until he came along.

So, maybe it just made sense that he couldn't get them all out of his head, all of them he left behind. He couldn't save them, so he had to remember them, wonder about them, carry their sufferings…real or imagined…on his shoulders forever.

His own personal curse, and at every turn there was something to stop him trying to break it.

* * *

Rai had a set of washboard abs that he liberally greased with WD40 before every game.

"Blinded by the light, y'know?" he prompted Sora, licking a gob of the stuff off his fingertip with evident relish, "Hope you don't got a sensitivity."

"I don't," Sora responded, at the same time thinking, _Not till I came here._

"Atta boy," as if Sora was some little kid; Rai couldn't be older than 25, "We're gonna give 'em a show, yeah?"

Which may have been the nicest possible way of saying ' _I can't wait to watch you die in front of a live audience_ '.

Sora nodded, halfheartedly, trying not to let his face show just how much of a roiling mess he felt inside and, seeing Rai was now making a show of popping his pecs one after the other in the grimy mirror, took this as an opportunity to slip away.

The locker room wasn't really much of a locker room. More like a low-ceilinged storehouse, equipped with dangerously unreliable showers, just adjacent to the actual Coliseum ring, which Sora hadn't even been allowed to see yet.

So much for getting a lay of the land, but at least he knew exactly what kind of rabid, bloodthirsty animals were going to try and rip him limb from limb in an hour.

Some of the others who would be competing today were already kitted out in weird, flamboyant battle dress. Greek armor made of scrap metal, war paint that more closely resembled a mental patient's art therapy project, even a few almost phallic headpieces.

Sora assumed there were long back stories behind all these looks, and felt suddenly smaller by comparison. He had no extra change of clothes, and none had been provided for him. He'd just be some nameless, scruffy teenager in a grungy hoodie and shorts, tossed out to die an easy death, an appetizer for the good stuff.

There was no way out of it now. He had to play, to at least try. Sora had no intention of just going into that ring and waiting to be ripped apart, or for Rai and his monosyllabic sidekick to form an ill-timed alliance and throw him to the wolves.

He was a fighter, wasn't he? That was the only reason the Captain had decided to let him live.

He had to fight, or else what was the point?

There were anxious goose prickles rising on Sora's arms; a pervasive tremor in his hands, in his legs, guiding him in confused, aimless circles.

It was much, much worse than pre-game jitters.

 _It's adrenaline, energy…you're just pumping yourself up, getting ready to surprise everybody with how good you are._

To no greater surprise than his own, of course.

His mind was drifting in so many different directions at once, that Sora at first didn't notice the fluttering, yellow blur that drifted into his face, until he'd almost sunk his teeth into it.

Letting out a confused sputter, Sora reeled back, swatting the thing down to the floor. It was a feather, Sora saw. Bright yellow, now quite mangled, drifting on down.

"Careful," cautioned a dry voice, "you don't want to catch one of those."

Cloud was propped up on a nearby changing bench, his scarf off for a change, pulling a faded blue tank-top over his head. His body was crisscrossed with scars, some barely visible in the limited light, and others as fresh as though he'd gotten them yesterday.

"What, yellow feathers?" Sora kicked away the thing, looking over at the neat pile of similar ones stacked up on the bench next to Cloud, "Sorry. I didn't mean to screw up your collection, or anything…"

"Don't sweat it. I can always get more." He pulled on a worn leather glove, one of the fingerless kind old-time pro fighters would wear, "How're you holding up?"

Sora knew enough by this point not to play it cool for Cloud's sake. Their little chat outside the kennel last night had given a clear impression that, though Cloud didn't necessarily want to be his friend or anything, he also didn't get some cheap thrill over watching Sora suffer.

Which was about as close to accepted as Sora felt he was going to get down here.

"Uh…well, I think I'm probably about to puke, but I haven't eaten anything, so… Not as bad as it could be, I guess?"

He shrugged, trying on a weak smile. Cloud shook his head with what may have been an exasperated smile, though with him it was always hard to tell.

"I told you. It'll pass. Once you're in the ring, it's just you."

"Yeah. Just me. Me, the rabid dogs, and the two total strangers who won't bust a sweat trying to kill me."

Cloud paused, as if thinking about it, and then he nodded, "Sounds about right."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Vote of confidence? Why should _I_ vote for your confidence? Why do you even care what I think?"

Sora resisted the impulse to snap, "What, is this when you tell me some motivational speaker blurb about how it's just _my_ confidence that matters?"

"No, because it doesn't." Cloud cocked an eyebrow, speaking slowly and plaintively, as if he were a teacher lecturing a slow kid.

"You don't think Fuu and Rai were in your place too, once? Standing here, sweating bullets, scared out of their minds? You think _I_ walked into my first match, ready to take the game by storm, surprise all the doubters, tame the savage beasts? No. I was expecting to go into the ring, try what I could, and come out in a pine box."

"But you _did_ come out. You won." Sora narrowed his eyes, "Didn't you?"

"Yeah, I did. Just barely, but I did."

"Okay…so how? What's the big secret?"

And now Cloud _did_ smile, a tiny smirk, one green eye glinting beneath his sweep of hair, "The other guy thought he had the game in the bag. Veteran champ vs some scrawny new kid just off the street. What was the big deal? He walked in, all confidence…" Cloud shrugged, "There. Motivated, yet?"

"Getting there," though Sora tried to play it off, there was something so oddly disquieting about the flippant way Cloud talked about it. There was no remorse in it…but why would there be? After all, it was a win or die situation.

But there was no boasting, either. Indeed, the way Cloud talked about it, it had just been something that happened to him. An incident in the past, staying in the past, that had had no bearing on anything since then.

And maybe that wasn't just the way to survive in the Coliseum: maybe it was the way to _live_ in it, too; that detachment. Sora wondered if he could muster up the same, if he even wanted to.

"So…the savage beast," hoping to change the subject, Sora moved to stand alongside the bench, leaning as casually as he could against the grimy plaster wall, "They threw you to the dogs the first day, too?"

"Not the hellhounds, no," Cloud explained, "Something a little bigger."

"Bigger?" There'd been nothing but dogs in the kennel when Sora had been down there, "Don't tell me they _really_ feed people to lions down here?"

"Little smaller than lions," Sora wasn't sure how someone who seemed so opposed to enjoying himself could get this much of a kick out of toying with him.

"Crocodiles, in point of fact," the chillingly oily voice came through before Cloud could finish speaking.

Cloud got to his feet, bowing his head in some sort of sign of genuflection; Sora may as well have stopped existing.

"Spreading your legend to the new blood, Strife?"

The Captain was dressed in a suit of what looked like livery, dark blue, almost black, with stark cufflinks and buttons of burnished brass; his mass of inky hair tied back with a similar brass clasp which only made his emaciated pale face that much more striking, more corpse-like.

His hook wasn't out today; instead he wore a prosthetic hand, covered with a leather glove to match his left one. Its stiff fingers were intertwined with those of his actual hand, as though to keep them stuck there.

"Sora," the Captain's hawkish eyes fixed down on the bench, "I made a point of remembering the name."

Figuring that this wasn't the time for some hasty display of protest, Sora got to his feet (noting vaguely that the pain in his side was getting fainter and fainter) and bobbed his head in a quick approximation of Cloud's bow.

The Captain sniffed through flared nostrils, yet his mouth was already curling into a satisfied, predatory grin, "It is quite a story, isn't it?"

"I hadn't gotten around to telling him all the details, Captain," said Cloud with measured stiffness.

"Well, it's worth a good listen, all the same," the Captain's stare never left Sora, "Nothing like an underdog story, yes?"

It took a few seconds, pinned under that stare, that Sora realized the Captain was, again, actually expecting an answer from him.

"Yes…yes, sir." He managed, feeling the words crawl up his throat with a hearty reluctance. At least some part of him was in the rebel mood today.

"Yes, _Captain_ ," he corrected, "'Captain' is a title that means something; 'sir' merely denotes unwarranted self-importance'."

 _And there isn't a speck of_ that _stuff around here,_ Sora thought sardonically, _no siree._

The Captain continued, "I remember your fondness for Hercules. _He_ was an underdog too, was he not?"

Sora felt his face flush. Not that he actually expected Cloud to laugh at the mention of the Hercules story, given his first encounter with Sora had been to find him crying like a baby on the floor.

He had enough reason to think Sora was a pathetic baby, and he apparently didn't. Still, the way the Captain fixed on things like that, just to make him squirm, knowing there was nothing Sora could do to stop it…

It was, in some ways, worse than actually facing a pack of hungry hellhounds. This was a feeling of entrapment, of being a specimen, pinned under a microscope to be examined at will.

"Yeah…he was. Strongest guy in the world and he still had to prove himself."

Sora was afraid the Captain would start on again about wits and cunning and all the rest of that, but instead he turned back to Cloud, looking past him to the pile of feathers on the bench.

"Strife proved himself most admirably, once upon a time," he continued, plucking a feather from the pile, "These used to be red, do you know?"

"Um…no. I don't."

"I didn't get around to that part either," Cloud interjected.

"Hm. Yes, they were red once…and in my time, blue."

"What are they for?" Sora asked, "Prizes?"

The Captain chuckled again, "No, no… _spoils,_ boy, spoils. They bear the Champion's colors, and it is to the Champion they belong…until some new challenger…" he flicked one beady eye from Cloud to Sora, a glint of teeth showing between his thin lips, "comes to usurp him."

Sora remembered the sign by the fireplace in the little room below the Captain's office. The hook, with the red and yellow feather crossed above it, like some sort of coat of arms.

"The Coliseum was not built for heroes, Sora," the Captain went on, turning the feather over in his hand, almost tenderly, "It was built for underdogs…I learned that, and Strife learned that… You might too, in time."

"You should live so long!" the new voice, buoyant and good-humored, cut so suddenly into the Captain's speech that Sora nearly jumped, caught off guard.

"Here's hoping," the man continued, stepping casually down the line of benches and change-closets, as if he'd just been waiting for the right chance to make his presence known, "Who doesn't love an underdog, am I right?"

The man was definitely older than Cloud, but not as old as the Captain. His face was lined and tanned, marred on the right side by some kind of burn scar. Whatever burn he'd suffered must have taken out his eye, too, given the patch he wore over it. The left eye, though, was keen and alert, an almost yellow sort of brown.

He walked like he talked, with a leisurely, easy-going sort of saunter, his arms crossed casually over his chest. He dressed similarly to Cloud, in a gray duster, pants and worn combat boots, but that was the only thing the two had in common.

"Who let _you_ in?" Cloud asked suspiciously, looking at the Captain as if for verification.

"Whoa, whoa, ease up on the hostility, won't ya?" he grinned at Sora, showing a set of surprisingly white teeth, jerking his thumb over to Cloud, "This guy. Got some kinda cloud following him around or something, I swear."

"Ease up, Strife," said the Captain, sounding more exasperated than annoyed, "Xigbar is here by invitation."

"Been a while since I got a chance to check out these games of yours; thought I'd take a look around." He looked Cloud up and down, "Seems like just yesterday I made a clean two-hundred betting on the little punky-faced newcomer." He punched Cloud lightly against the shoulder, like they were two teammates joking around in the locker room.

Cloud didn't budge an inch, his face set, though the stoniness seemed to have taken on a forced quality now.

"I'm lookin' to up the ante on that trick tonight, bud. See you don't let me down." He winked, a motion that only looked disquieting with his one eye.

Cloud's only response to that was a frigid nod as he collected a pair of feathers from the bench, stalking off down the corridor and out of sight.

"Ooh, looks like I pushed a button!" Xigbar laughed once he was gone, "But when a guy's got so many, how can you _not_?"

"How, indeed?" the Captain rolled his shoulders, making little effort to hide his distaste. He said, evidently for Sora's benefit, "Xigbar is a close business associate of ours."

" _Business associate_?" Xigbar repeated, "As if." he scratched absently at the back of his ear, "I prefer the term 'freelancer', myself" he went on, "Less stuffy."

"And less specific," the Captain drawled, prompting Xigbar to make some sort of shadow puppet pistol with his fingers, firing off a 'shot' at him with a muffled sound effect and a smirk, "You get it, _Capitano_."

"Clear as crystal," From the Captain's sour expression, Sora surmised that he not only 'got it', but was also very displeased about it, "If you've a mind to find a seat early, I'm sure Hades has prepared you a place in the Hespirides Box."

"Sounds scrumptious," he raised his eyebrows as if this was some big joke, "You can go ahead, though. I'll catch up."

"Oh, will you?" the Captain again looked side-eyes at Sora, who couldn't tell if there was an undercurrent of warning or of suspicion to it, "As you will." he started off, pausing again to address Sora, "Good fortune to you, _Sora_ ," whenever he pronounced the name, it was with a smug sort of showiness, as if to prove to Sora that he _could_ , even if he so often refused to, "on this, your first labor. May you have many more."

He stalked off.

Once the Captain had walked considerably out of range, Xigbar laughed sardonically, "Y'see, that's what I miss the most about this place. All the _double-talk_. You never know if someone's wishing you well, or if they'd gladly spit on your grave in the morning."

Sora hadn't been expecting to actually be _alone_ with this guy, but the way Xigbar was so stolidly standing there, there was no alternative interpretation to be made.

"Yeah...pretty sure most of it is the spitting one." Sora managed, wanting to turn and walk off, but finding he couldn't.

The way Xigbar was standing in front of the bench, arms crossed like some kind of ancient sentinel statue, still as a rock...yet looking poised to pounce at the slightest wrong move. For the first time, Sora noticed twin leather holsters hanging off Xigbar's waist, only partially concealed by his duster. They were both covered, but Sora could tell neither was empty.

"Don't be too sure," there was another glint of those almost canine teeth through his narrowly parted smile, "You're the new blood, right?"

"Um...I guess you could say that." Sora tensed, prepared for yet another out-of-left-field attack, "I'm new."

"Nothin' wrong with that."

"So I've heard."

Xigbar still didn't make any motion to leave, instead walking over to the pile of feathers, "They think they're _real_ hot stuff, don't they?" he picked up one of the feathers, waving it around his face like some mock dandy, "The fancy names, the fruity get-ups...whatever the hell _these_ stupid things are for..." he turned the feather around between two fingers.

"If you don't like any of it," Sora said with a daring he wouldn't have employed if it weren't for the fact that Xigbar was obviously waiting for him to say _something_ , "Why do you do business with them?"

Xigbar looked at him as if he'd just made some precious joke, laughing a raspy, yet somehow hearty laugh, "'Cause it's business, Sunshine. And if you only do business with guys you like..." he shrugged, "There goes my easy retirement."

He pointed the feather at Sora like it was some kind of baton, "And you'd be surprised how easy it is to put up with this crowd, once you get used to 'em. These hotshots...they're all about appearances, distractions..."

"It's an act," Sora had heard the same thing from Cloud, he really didn't need to hear it again, "They wanna look stupid so you don't get how dangerous they are."

"One way of lookin' at it. Me? I say they try to look stupid to make you _think_ they're more dangerous than they look. It's all in the act, Sunshine... Rip away the distraction..."

He snapped the feather in two, a sound so sharp that Sora was surprised everyone in the place didn't come bearing down on them.

"...and it's nothin' but a few confused old geezers, trying to play King of the Mountain." He let the two halves of the feather flutter down to the floor, turning his back, "Stay sharp, kid. I'm pulling for ya."

He made another of those finger-guns, fired a shot, and sauntered around the corner of the passage, out of sight.

Once he was gone, Sora found himself letting out a deep breath he didn't know he'd been holding in.

"I am _so_ done with this place," he muttered, kicking away at the broken feather.

Still, there wasn't just one, but _two_ strange, somewhat threatening people down here who believed he wouldn't die today.

Might as well try to prove them right.

* * *

Clayton seemed to take up half the room, between the broadness of his shoulders and the overall smothering effect of his voice.

"Ah, yes, _here's_ the missy with the shaving cream!" he announced, eying Jane's entrance in the mirror, "Thank you, my dear. If you'd just set that down on the side table, there, I'd be much obliged."

She nodded curtly to show she understood, and moved to oblige. The adjacent bathroom door was hanging partly ajar, a thin veil of steam streaming out of the crack into the bedroom proper. Jane could hear the hiss of running water in the shower.

"Now, forgive me if I'm mistaken," Clayton continued, "But would I be correct in saying you're the same charmer from the Hearts table?"

He must have noticed Jane's hesitation, because he wagged a finger toward her face, "Those pretty little pictures... _quite distinctive._ "

Jane nodded, albeit reluctantly. She had no wish to be pinned here any longer than necessary. Things were moving all too fast around here today, all owing to the Coliseum matches.

"Would you believe my stubborn ox of a roommate is still spitting red over that game?" Clayton snorted, "Of course, frightfully rude of those two bounders to jump out halfway through, but I think you'll agree the spoils went to _me_ , fair and square."

Funny he should mention that. Jane had seen no sign of the taciturn undercover cop since their unexpected meeting last night.

 _And I've no way to see if he's made any good on my tip, wrapped up as I am in men's toiletries._

"I'll make the money back, you braggart," drawled the slow, easygoing voice of Clayton's...business partner? Friend? Undercover lover?

Jane had to admit, her breath caught a little in her lungs at the sleek, broad-shouldered figure Gaston cut as he leaned against the bathroom doorway, a red cotton robe lazily draped around him. Still, he had a cold sort of cruelness in his face, which tanked the fantasy.

"I've an eye for this sport."

"Hmph," Clayton had begun spreading the shaving cream along his jawline, turning his face this way and that in the mirror, "We'll see."

He gave Jane a supercilious wink, as if inviting her to share in a joke.

"This one believe in me," Before Jane could do anything to move, Gaston had grabbed her by the arm, holding her fast in a strong, firm grip, his hand still wet from the shower, "Don't you?"

 _Stay calm. Stay_ calm _, Jane, dammit. He's not going to do anything to you...just stand firm and get the hell out of here._

She made to pull away from him, but got so little out of it she may as well not tried at all.

"Unhand the girl, for heaven's sake," said Clayton dismissively, "Before you break her in half."

Jane pulled away again, this time yanking her arm from his grip, sore and red though it was. Not wanting to speak any more than she needed, Jane simply turned on her heel and made to leave.

"Wish me luck, Beauty!" she heard Gaston calling after her as she closed the door, "Perhaps you'll pay me a visit after the show?"

"Or perhaps I'll put rusty nails in your shaving cream," she muttered, starting down the hall to the back staircase, "Pig."

She still had goosebumps prickling up the back of her neck. It wasn't like Jane had been unprepared for this sort of thing...she knew what to expect going on, and Esmeralda had given her a neat little refresher course just in case she'd been thinking of forgetting.

The way some men could be so cavalier, so self-assured in their ability to snare someone smaller, less powerful than themselves, and wrap them around their fingers…

 _It's the same everywhere. Casinos, law firms, newsrooms…_

Even the staff hallway was more trafficked than usual. Jane rubbed shoulders with other Patchwork Girls, masked and unmasked, couriers in gray-and-navy livery, and even a few grim-faced fellows in dark suits, leather holsters displayed prominently on their hips.

Security, Jane told herself, but the Styx and Stones' nature of security didn't do very much to make her feel secure.

She found her room locked and, once unlocked, empty upon her arrival, which was some kind of comforting.

"Now, then," she said to herself, clasping her hands together as she pulled a spindly chair over to the dresser, "Let's review."

She hadn't had a chance to review her recordings from either of the bugs she'd placed yet…and the only live bit she'd gotten had come from that little incident with Esmeralda.

 _A very good thing to know, though, if only I had some way of knowing whether anyone's_ doing _anything about it._

She knew enough about Squall Leonhart to surmise that he wasn't one to just ignore a well-intentioned tip. No doubt he'd do what he could, but there was so little time…

 _But it_ is _his case, isn't it? Why else would that greasy old liverwurst send him back down here if not to find Sora, Riku, et. al?_

In light of Esmeralda's snooping and subsequent 'holier than though' advice, Jane had moved the wire-tap recorder and its associated cassette tapes into the third drawer to the bottom of the dresser, a drawer that was A.) missing its handle and therefore B.) could only be opened by one intent on breaking in.

Jane was no stranger to these things, of course. She'd learned the basics of lockpicking and its associated tricks in anticipation of a big reporting assignment, but up till now these skills had only come in handy when she lost her keys.

A little jimmying with a ballpoint pen in the empty lock, and Jane heard a satisfying click as the drawer slid open, revealing the fruits of her day and a half in the Underworld. One wood-cased console with two decks, each one currently recording a tape (added at 5 in the morning, for the sake of easy reference; last night's listenings had already been put to the side, next to the console), producing smooth and steady humming noises.

"But wait…" There _weren't_ two smooth and steady humming noises. Just the one, from the first tape on the deck, the one on Luxord's office phone. The other was still, silent, recording nothing at all.

Jane felt a wrenching in her chest. Could she really have been so careless to have bungled up with the wire?

Forcing her panic down, Jane took the tape from the console, turning it so she could get a closer look at the spool of film within.

Half recorded. So it had been working at _some_ point.

She returned the tape to the deck, tentatively switching the recorder to 'play back', and watching the delicate unfurling closely.

 _No point playing from the beginning._

Well, there _was_ , but at the moment she rationalized it was more significant knowing just _how_ the wire had been cut short.

Putting the headphones on over her head, Jane paused the playback at a moment shortly before the jam and played the tape.

"… _are you about finished chest slapping, darling?_ " Cruella de Vil, mid-conversation from the sound of it, " _You're giving me gas._ "

" _You_ will _explain!_ " Jafar sounded out-of-breath, furious, frenetically pacing the room.

" _Funny, I thought explaining was_ your _job. What have I done now, Jafar?_ " a pause, a little hiss that Jane guessed was a cigarette lighter being clicked open, " _If this is all some little game to get me hot and heavy, sorry to say it isn't working._ "

" _I saw your little rendezvous at the door_ ," Jafar snarled, " _What, are you conspiring with these people? Withholding information from me? Telling them tales on me?_ "

" _Oh, yes, I've learned so many lovely things about you the last few days, haven't I? I'm sure the Enemy would love a detailed report on your irritable bowel habit._ "

" _There is no_ …" Jafar tapered off, and Jane heard a slam; perhaps he'd taken to attacking furniture the way Jane had observed last night with…

The door opened, breaking Jane's concentration. Instinctively, she raised her hand to the headphones, already beginning to remove them, cursing her stupidity.

Shock came sidling through the doorway, looking quite particularly satisfied with herself. She had something carelessly tucked into one of the pockets of her patchwork dress.

"Secret music collection?" she observed, looking down at the console.

"…Yes," answered Jane slowly, at a loss, " _Top_ secret."

"Ooh la, la," Shock ran her fingers through stringy, black hair, "Suddenly everyone's got a secret."

"Isn't that the whole point of this place?" asked Jane, not entirely wanting to talk about this, but feeling she didn't have much choice with Shock hovering around as she was, "Everyone gets to be comfy with their secrets.'

Shock shrugged, "Maybe. They don't always tip for it, though." She winked, tossing her mask onto her bed with a sigh.

A sudden loud noise from the earphones distracted Jane, as she hurriedly pressed it back against her ear to Shock's evident exasperation.

Things had clearly escalated, " _Fine, then, if you want no part of it, just stay out of my way!_ " Cruella was shrieking, " _I don't much fancy sitting around here collecting dust while some deluded Death's Head dandy plots how best to kill me_."

" _You're still on about that?_ " Jafar's boredom may have been funny under other circumstances, " _I'll say it again, woman, if anyone kills you at this point it most certainly won't be_ them _._ "

" _Oh, was that a threat?_ " a manic laugh, " _Oh, the Big Bad Defense Attorney has about had it with his wacky lady sidekick! Well, go ahead, then! Go ahead and stick a knife in it! I relish the novelty!_ "

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane glimpsed Shock discreetly removing something from the pocket of her dress: some glittery little box, silver-plate with an ornate clasp. It was monogrammed, but Jane couldn't make out the letters from here.

But it now seemed she didn't much need to.

" _Or can't you kill a woman without crying to Grandmother Lurch first?_ "

" _Hold your tongue!_ " a crash and a cry; he must have hit her, " _How many times must I tell you I had_ nothing _to…_ "

Cruella spat, " _Semantics, darling. Would you rather I say 'fate worse than death'?_ "

Another scuffle, but this time it seemed Cruella had got the upper hand. Jane heard an upsurge of static that made her flinch. This struggle must have happened right adjacent to the dresser: the wiretap was being jostled about.

" _You impertinent little…_ " Jafar trailed off, " _What the devil_ …"

There was another quick noise of movement, another surge of static, and the recording cut off.

Jane sat there, staring down at the console, feeling her breath coming in quick gasps. She shifted in her seat, feeling goosebumps prickling up her arms.

"Tape tangled?"

Shock's voice came so suddenly Jane almost jumped, pressing her hand to her breast to calm herself down.

"Get me a pen and I'll get it right again. I'm a whiz at that stuff."

Jane looked past Shock to the bedazzled box on the bed behind her. As she suspected, the letters _C.D.V_ were embossed into the lid in a flagrant, loopy cursive.

"Shock," she said quietly, not wanting to come off as threatening or anything of that sort, "New cigarette case?"

Shock did a quick double take, her easy, thin-lipped grin slipping a few notches. She picked up the box, turning it over in her hand as if to hide the initials from Jane.

"What can I say? You play your cards right, you get tips. Your time'll come too, Steffy."

Jane tried not to react at all to that 'play your cards' talk. For all she knew, Shock just meant it as an innocuous retort, a figure of speech.

But Jane remembered the cards, sliding one by one across the green felt of the table, the way her hand had shaken with pent up anxiety as she hastily scrawled the messages, hoping against hope her chance meeting with Detective Leonhart was as much a stroke of fortune as it seemed.

' _THEY'LL KILL CELESTE'S BOY_ '.

"It belongs to that woman in the Green Room," Jane said at once, "Cruella de Vil. Doesn't it?"

Shock's smile had by now curdled entirely on her face, her fingers closing tightly around the box, "Gonna rat on me for stealing, Steffy?"

"You weren't stealing,' said Jane, "She gave it to you, didn't she?"

Shock hesitated, looking past Jane to the tape deck, something like understanding in her face.

"No rules against tipping down here," Shock crossed her arms, "I'm not so sure about spying…"

"I don't want to get you in any trouble," Jane said at once, lifting her hands as if in surrender, "Please, I'm just trying to understand what's going on here."

"Oh, yeah?" she cocked her head, "You some kind of cop?"

"Not at all. I'm…I'm trying to help someone."

"You got a funny way of showing it. If anyone helped that crazy bitch, it's me." Shock looked over to the door, as if to make sure it was indeed closed.

For the first time, it dawned on Jane just _how_ closed this room really was. No windows, the one door, one slit-thin air vent to keep them from suffocating. The air was hot and damp, stinking of smoke and cheap fragrance.

"Cruella?"

"I thought we agreed she was just some loose end, waiting for someone to trim her down," Shock's teeth were a mottled sort of yellow, almost brown, "She thought so too, remember?"

"You…you helped her _escape_?" Not at all what Jane had been expecting, "I don't understand…"

"You don't need to. Or should I start asking about your fancy home theater set up?"

"How did you do it without being seen? There's security everywhere, and with all these people here for the games…"

"No shortage of shortcuts in this place, if you know where to look. Special peepholes for guests the Big Guy wants to keep an eye on. Not hard to find 'em, once you know how."

"Risky of you." Jane remarked with due caution.

"Get yourself a shiny little lockbox and I'll help you outta here too." Shock smiled slyly, plopping back down on her bed, bony legs kicking up as lightly as if she were some old doll flung away without ceremony, "That what you're after?"

"Perhaps sometime. But not today." Barely thinking, Jane had already retrieved her mask, putting it back on as she crossed to the door.

"Oh, no, you don't," Shock stepped deftly in her way, the creaking bedsprings indicated she'd gotten up quite clumsily, "Snitches get stitches, Steffy."

"That they do," replied Jane, trying to sound as brave and confident as she could, "Good thing I'm no snitch, then."

"Oh, yeah? Why should I believe a word you say?" Shock closed her fingers around the doorknob.

"That's a fair point," Jane allowed, "I'll...I'll explain everything to you."

"Oh yeah?"

"Later," And Jane barreled forward, shoving Shock's bony frame aside with a swish of her own less-than forceful hips.

Good thing her roommate weighed about as much as a paper doll. Shock fell back against the bed with a shrieked curse, as Jane wrenched the door open and hotfooted it down the hallway as quickly as her legs could carry her.

 _Oh, perfect. You're through now, entirely through_ , she told herself despondently, adjusting her mask on her face as she rounded a bend in the passage, _She's onto you, you've blown your cover and you've nowhere to go, all because you're so easily shake..._

"Oof!" she let out a startled gasp as she ran up against the form of a taller, broad-shouldered man who must have just emerged from one of the, usually locked, doors at the end of the corridor.

"Hey, hey, where's the fire, Chickadee?" he placed his hands on Jane's shoulders, but she'd already frozen stock still at his voice.

She _knew_ that voice, the very same sure, certain drawl from the wiretap,

"I...I'm sorry..." Jane managed, forcing herself to look up at the man's face. He was grinning down at her, as though she were some mildly amusing animal he'd passed in the street. He had one eye, the other concealed behind an eyepatch...still, that one eye did enough looking for two, moving rapidly up and down Jane's face, as if searching for imperfections, falsities, lies...

"Aw, you're shaking, poppet," he ran rough, firm hands down Jane's arms, "Sorry...didn't mean to scare ya that bad."

"I'm not scared," Jane made as if to pull herself free of the man's grip, but he was holding fast to her, his face betraying nothing.

"Just...such a damn maze in this place, I gotta confess I lost my way." One hand reached up, to caress the edge of Jane's mask.

"You wouldn't happen to know the way up outta this hole, eh?"

Jane brought her hand up to stay his own, keeping him away from her mask, "There are...um..." she swallowed, feeling her breath catching in her lungs, "Elevators, down that way," she nodded back the way she'd come, "Hang a right when you reach the laundry."

"Oh, yeah," he nodded with immense gratification, as if Jane had confirmed some long held truth, "Thanks, doll, you're a lifesaver."

He patted her on the shoulder, and Jane could feel her skin crawl beneath his touch, an unwanted, invasive feeling, "See you around,"

Jane watched him saunter down the hall, his hands in the pockets of his trailing leather duster. He left behind an odd scent...some sort of cologne, maybe, but masked with an almost sulfurous smell, like some kind of furnace.

Jane fell back against the wall, breathing heavily, her hand pressed over her heart to catch herself.

"Oh my God," she whispered, "Oh my God, oh my God..."

For the first time since her flight from her room, she noticed she was the only one in this part of the hallway. Either she'd rushed far away from the more trafficked parts of the basement, or everyone had been called elsewhere. Her absence would likely be noticed, by Esmeralda if nobody else.

 _That's_ if _Shock doesn't rat you out first, with whatever she_ thinks _you are_.

But Jane couldn't worry herself thinking about that now, could she? She looked back at the door the eyepatched man had emerged from. It was labeled in faded red paint, like so many other doors on this level.

' _MAINTAINANCE STAIR B_ '.

Fine, a back staircase.

"Why would you need to know where the elevator is if you're already on the stairs?" Jane doubted that man who'd accosted her was anything less than physically trim.

Tentatively, Jane wrapped her fingers around the doorknob, stepping out onto a dimly lit landing. To her right, stairs went up through the casino, restaurant, and all residential floors of Elysian Fields. To her left...

Jane felt a familiar muggy breeze wafting up from the stairway going down. No elevator on _that_ level, certainly, whatever that level was. It didn't take a master detective to figure out that's where he'd come from.

"Alright..." Jane told herself, wrapping her arms around her body, if only to stop her shaking, "Up or down, Jane...up or down."

Tempting as it was to discover what that man was about and where those stairs led, Jane wasn't sure she'd like to chance a new route in this place...not, at least, without checking out that other lead, first.

The hot breeze seemed to cling to the back of Jane's neck as she hurried up the rest of the stairs, floor after floor after floor long after it made any sense for her to still feel it.

She reached the 12th level, hot and breathless, feeling like she could suffocate beneath her mask. Making sure she was alone on the landing, Jane at last removed the mask long enough to recover some composure.

It was like freeing herself from a prison cell, as if this dingy little stair landing was the cleanest Andean peak in Peru.

There was no noise from the other side of the landing door. Jane didn't expect there to be any. After all, there were only two tenants up here.

Putting her mask back on, Jane opened the door, looking down the lonely corridor. The hall lights shone with dim restraint on the black marble floors, giving the whole place a sterile, cold quality, like a mausoleum. But the silence here was less mournful and contemplative. Jane found herself thinking of the inevitable silence before a huge storm falls, or before a tremendous fight, in the very seconds before someone fires the first shot.

 _I think you've been more than sufficiently poetic, now could you just get_ on _?_

So Jane spurred herself forward, starting across the hallway, her shoes click-clacking with an almost unnatural echo off the walls and ceiling.

"Red Room, Blue Room, Topaz Room," she muttered to herself as she passed the labeled doors, "...Green Room."

The door was shut firmly, but what else had Jane expected? She stood there, staring at it for a short while, half expecting it to be flung open any second. But nothing.

She reached out to take the handle with one hand and, her hand trembling like a leaf in the wind, she knocked weakly once, then twice on the polished wood.

The door budged inward at the second knock. It wasn't locked.

"Oh, to hell with it!" Steeling herself, Jane opened the door the rest of the way, stepping through into the Green Room.

"Hello?" she called, looking around the darkened bedroom. Midafternoon sun was wafting through closed curtains, giving the room a sickly sort of quality in its determined darkness.

"Housekeeping?" she added, experimentally, sighing, "Suppose not."

She took a step closer to the window, where something crunched audibly beneath her foot.

"Beezus!" she cried, stumbled back against the dresser. The dresser...

Her suspicions were confirmed as Jane bent down to find the shattered black casing, the frayed cable of the wiretap she'd hidden in this room, apparently recently discovered by Jafar himself.

Jane crouched down to pick up the wire herself, if only to see how much of a number Jafar had done on it before her shoe had come along. Yet, in doing so, Jane felt a breeze stirring her hair, the skirt of her patchwork dress.

Letting out a sharp gasp, Jane turned to face a wood panel adjacent to the armoire. Well...there _should_ have been a panel there, but in its place was a gaping black rectangle.

"Secret passage," Jane whispered, going over to the spot on hands and knees , peering through into the darkness.

It was like a well, built very narrowly into the walls of the hotel. Jane reached forward into the gap and grabbed at air, feeling a sudden bout of queasiness. On closer examination, there was a metal ladder affixed to the side, plunging down.

"A neat escape for our Miss de Vil," Jane decided, straightening to her feet, "Sloppy leaving the door open..."

Figuring there must be at least _something_ lying around this room to answer even one of her many, many questions, Jane moved to the shaded lamp on the dresser and switched it on, suffusing the the room in warm golden light.

She screamed, unable to restrain herself, feeling her mask fall from her face to the floor, as she stumbled over her own feet.

There was a man lying in the bed, spread-eagled like a drunk, his suit in a state of disheveled disarray. But the mere presence of the man wasn't what had gotten Jane so shaken...

He was covered in blood, from his neck to his waist. A darkish, wine-stained red, still glistening with moisture, as if it had been warm and flowing only minutes ago.

"Oh..." she gasped, pressing her hands over her mouth in mixed revulsion and shock, "Oh my God... _Jafar_."

The infamous and lecherous attorney, source of Jane's one moment in the spotlight, was lying dead in the bed, his throat sliced through like a loaf of soft cheese. His eyes were open, shiny grey eyes, staring wide and fixated at the patterns of the tin ceiling overhead.

There was something peculiar poking out of the lapel on the bloodstained jacket. Feeling almost transfixed, Jane felt herself taking one step, then two, then three closer to the bed, her eyes clouding over with tears she didn't feel.

A little flash of canary yellow in the jacket, like a boutonniere, a carnation, maybe, but...

A hand wrapped around Jane's wrist, another pressing over her mouth, startling a cry of surprise.

"Quiet, dammit," hissed a familiar voice, the fragrance of an exotic perfume stinking up Jane's nostrils, "You'll bring the whole place down on us and then we're _both_ fucked."

Esmeralda was dressed for the floor, in her purple gown, oversize earrings waving between her ringlets, bangles jangling on her wrists as Jane struggled against the vice grip she had her in.

But, this once, Jane found the strength to fight back against her.

"He's dead," she said, a note of strained anger in his voice, " _Killed_."

"I can see that."

Jane wrenched her arm free of Esmeralda's grip, noticing she must have closed the door behind her as she'd entered. And, either way, Esmeralda was blocking it.

Jane nodded toward the open passage, "Cruella...Cruella de Vil, the chauffeur...she must have got out that way."

Esmeralda nodded slowly, though her expression remained ever inscrutable, "...You shouldn't be up here."

"No," Jane said automatically, wiping at a tear she didn't feel trickling down her face, "...Neither should you. How did..."

She froze, the words curdling in her throat. Esmeralda stood there, a crack at last appearing in the typically impassive mask she wore.

"...you _knew_ ," Jane whispered, hushed, "Oh my God, you _knew_..."

"Jane, please, I'll explain, but we can't..." Esmeralda took a step forward.

"No!" Jane pressed herself up against the wall, "You knew, you _knew_ , you lying, self-serving _shrew_! You were listening to my recordings, of course you heard more than I did..." she let out a short, hysterical laugh, "You _knew_ they weren't talking about killing Sora today...they weren't after him at all."

"Jane..." but Esmeralda was caught, Jane could see in the way she wrung her hands together, the look of abashed silence that spread over her, even something almost resembling shame.

"You let me believe it was Sora they were after...you didn't want me doing anything to stop... _this_!" she nodded over at Jafar in the bed.

"You're right, I didn't," Esmeralda came closer, eyes wide and beseeching, "Because I know you and Jafar have history. If they had caught you, they would have thrown you under the bus!"

" _They_?" Jane found herself pressing up against the writing desk, "They, you mean your suited piece of Job Insurance, that Luxord..."

"You have to believe me, I had no idea he was planning this..."

"Oh, really? Just like you had no idea about the Coliseum reopening, or Sora being kept down there, or..."

"That was all different, Jane, I told you, there's only so much I can do..."

"No, there's only so much you _will_ do!" Jane found what she was looking for on the desk: a narrow, but lethal sharp letter opener, which she turned on Esmeralda, prompting her to take a step back.

"Jane, I was trying to protect you..."

"Oh yes?" Jane could feel her hand shaking, but she tightened her grip on the blade, praying she wouldn't drop it, feeling like a cornered animal, "What a fine way of protecting me...lying the entire time, while I risk my _life_ to get the truth of what's going on here. Yes, yes, Esmeralda, I thank you for your _protection_..."

"We will figure this out, Jane, I promise I will help you, but we can't stay here..."

"Do you have _any_ idea what I've done, because you lied to me?" Jane demanded.

"I...I never lied," But the weakness of Esmeralda's statement was clearly not lost on her.

"Withheld the truth. Fine, that sound prettier to you? I thought they were going to kill the boy in the games, I thought he was doomed before he started, I..."

But she stopped herself from mentioning Leonhart. She could well be sealing his fate if she said too much.

"I promise you, Jane, we will help Sora," Esmeralda said placatingly, "But..." she reached out, as if to pry the letter opener from Jane's hand, but Jane retaliated, grabbing at Esmeralda's wrist with her other hand, wrenching her away.

"You...get back from me!" She pulled herself back from Esmeralda so forcefully she came with a crash against the wall, feeling a whoosh of hot air around her.

"Jane, stop this, we don't have much..." Esmeralda seized Jane by the wrist, her grip strong enough to cause her to drop the letter opener to the floor, her pincer-like nails digging into Jane's flesh with enough force to make her cry out, lashing back.

Her ankle caught on something as she fell backward, and Jane felt a hot breeze tugging at her patchwork clothes, at her hair.

She was aware of a voice, desperately calling her name, a bejeweled, coppery hand reaching out for her, a flash of pain as her forehead scraped against a low wall...

And then, a fleeting weightlessness, as though she were falling down some darkened rabbit hole. She felt hot blood in her eyes, in her mouth, and heard a woman screaming from somewhere close by...

A lucid thought came to her for one fleeting flash, _Talk about a buried lead. Maybe Daddy can dig you up in a decade or two_. _Journalism and archeology._..

She heard a sickening crack, and suddenly the woman stopped screaming.

* * *

Never before in his life had Squall felt such an overwhelming desire to kill somebody with his bare hands. At the same time, he'd never been more aware that he just _couldn't_ kill that somebody at the moment.

"Trail picks up here," Squall noted, rubbing his finger against a tacky red spot on the crumbling brick wall of the narrow sewer-like tunnel, "Blood stains getting closer together. Your pet must be close."

"We're wastin' time, Leon," Seifer panted from alongside him, "Games' gonna start any minute now."

Squall might have pointed out that it must be hard keeping such precise track of time without a watch of any sort, but this _was_ the twelfth or thirteenth time Seifer had pointed out that very detail since the little red-headed girl had reopened the grille and set back out into the tunnels, blood trickling from her side where the insane woman's bullet had grazed her.

"What? No loyalty to your private contract?" Squall scoffed without turning back to look at him, "How else you gonna make a living? You've got mouths to feed and orphans to clothe..."

"Contract wasn't about _her_ ," Seifer snarled dismissively, like some pouty kid trying not to sound put out over losing some game, "I can always get another..."

Squall rounded on his heel before he knew what was doing, his fist connecting with Seifer's jaw.

Seifer fell on his back in the ankle-deep sewage, coughing and sputtering like a doused dog, "W-what the _fuck_? You wanna break my face or something?"

Leon yanked Seifer to his feet, pinning him against the wall by his collar, "Why not? I'll get you a new one for Christmas."

Seifer spit blood from his mouth. His lip was split, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. Squall wasn't surprised. He'd always been about as resilient as he was melodramatic.

"Next time you wanna sound like a martyr," Squall explained, "better try to avoid talking about people like they're animals."

He released Seifer, who collapsed against the wall, breathing heavily, angrily. He stared at Squall with a sort of bloodthirsty vengeance in his eyes, but Squall didn't expect him to do anything. His runaway concubine had made off with his knife, and Squall still had the second one. Seifer was smart enough not to risk a fight with that kind of disadvantage.

"I didn't mean it like that," he said at last, as they continued down the tunnel.

"Oh yeah? Care to explain _how_ you meant it?"

"I...look, Leon...it's..." he trailed off, stammering incoherently.

"Mindblowing."

"Look!" Seifer grabbed at Squall's arm, turning him around to face him, "You think I _wanted_ to go around actin' like some thug's professional kidnapper?"

"I don't know, you keep going on about the perks so you can't be _too_ torn up about it."

"I never asked for this, Leon, I didn't have a choice," he jabbed his finger in Squall's face, "And before you bring up Ri, _don't_."

"Why shouldn't I?" Squall demanded quietly, "I mean...how is what happened to her any different from what happens to all these girls you've taken?" he leaned forward, "I know what happened to the boy. Come on. Indulge me. What happens to the girls?"

"And I told _you_ , Leon," Seifer retorted, "Hades never got no girls from me."

"Huh," Squall nodded slowly, practiced skepticism working on his face, "Then who _did_?"

Squall wasn't expecting an answer, but even if Seifer was planning to give one, he was unable, as a great crash echoed down the corridor to them, followed by a short but earsplitting scream...but an odd sounding scream, strange and inarticulate, almost _animalistic_.

"Fuck was that?" Seifer demanded, prompting Squall to silence him with a frigid glare.

He continued down the corridor, slower, more deliberately.

"What're you doing?" he heard Seifer behind him, "Leon, are you nuts?"

But Squall heard splashing in the water behind him, which clued him in that Seifer was, indeed, following him.

Squall reached for the hilt of the knife in his belt, half-drawing it in preparation. He thought he heard more faint splashing from further up ahead, as of someone moving away, but it was hard to be sure.

He and Seifer rounded a bend in the tunnel, off a short ledge to a spot where the water came up to their knees.

"This is fucking crazy..." Seifer muttered, wading through the water with such painful sluggishness it might have been molasses, or human excrement.

"Shut up," Squall said, barely audibly.

"What? You're _seeing_ this, right?" Slosh in the water.

Squall turned around to face Seifer, who was waving his hand around in the muck like a kid playing in a wading pool.

But Squall saw what he was seeing. Eddying in the water, curling in thin, stringy tendrils like oil, was more blood.

Squall nodded to show he understood and, a new tension taking over him, continued down the tunnel, Seifer begrudgingly following.

"Look, Leon, this ain't worth it. I know you're pissed with me, man, okay, fine, I get it."

"You don't need to get it."

"And you can do whatever the hell you want with me later..."

"I can hardly wait."

"...but there is something _royally_ fucked up going on here and I don't... _sonuvabitchjesuschristfuck_!"

The unnatural chain of expletives was followed by a shout and a splash, all combined to make enough noise to echo up and down the tunnel spectacularly. But before Squall could reprimand Seifer for the outburst, he saw what it was that had _caused_ the outburst.

Seifer was slumped over in the water, hyperventilating and whey-faced, staring with wide eyes at the prone form of a pale-skinned girl with long red hair, floating facedown in the water, blood seeping from her body, staining the water murky red in an inexorably expanding circle around her.

"That's..." Seifer managed in a choked voice, "That's..."

Squall got down to a crouch, feeling the girl's hand. Cold and wet, but with an underpinning of warmth, rapidly fading.

She was naked. On closer examination, Squall spotted a torn length of green fabric floating in the water a little distance away. The dress she'd been wearing, looking as though it had been slashed right off her.

"The hell did this happen?" Seifer asked at last, recovering himself enough to stand, taking off his scarf to cover his mouth, as if he was seriously going to be sick, "Bullet just grazed her..."

"No bullet did this," Squall told Seifer flatly.

"Yeah, I _know_ that, man, I'm not..."

Squall pushed aside the length of hair splayed out around the girl, revealing her back.

"Jesus Christ," he said, hushed, looking at the bloody ruin etched into the flesh.

"Holy shit," Seifer tentatively looked down at the body, " _X_?"

"Looks like it."

Two scars, crisscrossing each other across the entire length of the so recently escaped Beautiful Soul's back. They were deep, fresh, and resembled nothing more than a capital _X_.

"Like...'X marks the spot'?" Seifer suggested.

Squall gave him a withering look, prompting Seifer to lower the scarf from his mouth, "What, I was being _serious_!" he shook his head, taking two uneasy steps away from the body, "We gotta get the hell outta here before whoever did this comes back..."

But Squall was already looking ahead down the tunnel a short distance. There was an open door on the right side, just beyond the circle of the girl's blood. This door was cast iron, and short, maybe about four feet tall, positioned so as to be just above the water line (though the damp marks on the lower half suggested this was not always achievable), with no stairs leading up to it.

It was hanging open, on a broken hinge that couldn't have been broken for long, the way the door was still stubbornly hanging on.

Squall held up a hand for silence, and started for the door.

"Dammit, what _now_?" Seifer waded along after him, looking up at the door, "What, a way out?"

"Doubt it." Squall grabbed onto the weathered concrete threshold of the door, heaving himself up and through before turning, extending a hand to help Seifer up.

"Come on," he told him.

Seifer hesitated, "I didn't sign up to play crime scene detective, Leon. Whoever did this might still be close, waiting for us!"

"Good point," Squall nodded, "Feel free to go along and check."

Seifer cursed under his breath, giving Squall his hand, wet and sweaty as it was, to be heaved up into this new room.

It was definitely a closed, stuffy sort of place that must get even less air than the rest of the Underworld. The air stank of mold, mildew, and of something...else. A stronger, staler, almost _cold_ sort of smell.

"Satisfied?" Seifer asked, "Nobody here."

"Give me some light." he ordered bluntly.

A short silence, followed by the sound of Seifer slapping his fingers, "Huh. You know, it worked _real_ well last week..."

"Your lighter."

Seifer cursed again, but fished a silver-plate cigarette lighter (cross embossed, naturally) from the pocket of his jeans. After some struggling, he switched it on, casting a warm flame around the little room.

Squall's breath caught in his throat, as Seifer muttered another, "Aw, son of a bitch."

The room itself was four plaster walls and a leaky ceiling. Not much to make a fuss about. It was the décor that caught Squall so off guard.

Words, scratched into the plaster in capital, jagged letters, some only a few inches high, some measuring about two feet, taking up huge sections. They overlapped too, some half-faded and others as fresh and white as if they'd only been carved this morning.

" _COMPLETE_ ," Squall read the words as he circled slowly around the wall, " _UNCLEAN, HEAL...X_ s everywhere."

" _BROKEN, FRACTURED_..." Seifer was on the other side of the room, shining his light on the words, "Whoa."

"What?"

"Heads up," he shone his lighter up to the ceiling, where a sentence was carved in huge letters above them.

Seifer read aloud, " _TO MAKE WHOLE AGAIN_. Holy shit, it's like some fucking scary movie in here."

"I don't understand," said Squall.

"What a relief, I thought I was the only one."

Squall silenced him with a look, "Make _what_ whole again? Clean what...heal what?"

"Great questions. We oughta find the whackjob and ask him."

"Did you know about this?"

"No," Seifer spoke so bluntly, with an implacable undercurrent that Squall knew was fear, "If I did, I woulda knocked your lights out and run the other way before we even found the body."

And, this once, Squall felt sure Seifer wasn't lying to him.

"It's like...a prison cell," Squall continued, pacing slowly around the room, "Someone was being kept here."

"Well, looks like _someone_ broke himself out." Seifer rapped lightly on the forced door.

"Or someone broke him out," Squall suggested, going over to have a better look at the hinges, "This thing was forced from the outside."

"You can tell that?" asked Seifer.

"Kind of my job." Squall indicated the signs of wear and tear on the broken hinge, "It would be impossible to get that kind of damage from this side. This room's practically airtight."

" _Practically_ ," Seifer repeated, looking again at the graffiti, "Bet it took a lot of air to finish this collage." he ran his fingers slowly down the length of the word _BROKEN_ , "…the hell?"

Seifer bent down to a little cluster of detritus in the corner of the cell. When he straightened up again, there was a lone black feather in his hand.

"They keep birds in here?" Seifer scoffed, as if to laugh it off, but his unease showed through.

"There's more of them," Squall indicated the pile Seifer had found the feather in, "Dozens."

"Yeah," Seifer nodded, "Yanno what? I've had enough. Let's get the hell outta..."

He turned to face Squall and stopped in his tracks, his mouth widening into an expression of stupefied shock. The feather, forgotten, fluttered back down to the floor.

Squall was about to ask Seifer what the problem was now, but he heard a clear clicking noise he recognized all too well: the cocking of a gun.

"No sudden moves, Detective," a polished, clipped voice that Squall hadn't thought to ever hear again, "Perhaps you remember how I abhor violence."

"Luxord," Squall said flatly, feeling the barrel of a gun stick into the small of his back.

"You remember. I'm flattered. Now, now...it seems you young bucks have a lot of explaining to do."

"Explaining?" echoed Seifer, switching off his lighter and plunging it back into his pocket.

"Yes, explaining. Fun as it would be to _guess_ what exactly you two are doing down here, behind a broken down door with a fresh corpse right over the threshold, the Lord of the Dead doesn't share my patience for games."

He grabbed Squall's forearm and spun him around to face him, treating Squall to a full view of that cold, fox-like face, that silvery-blond hair and sharp gray eyes, still keen and cunning as they'd been nine years ago.

"Now...you lads _will_ play along, won't you?" his lips curled into a distinctive, cold-blooded smirk, "It's easier when we all play our part."

* * *

After navigating an increasingly twisty-turny labyrinth of catacombs in various states of disrepair, Riku had been able to get the majority of Cruella's story out of her.

She and Jafar had been brought to some hotel the Styx and Stones ran as a legitimate front ("You'd need to have been born yesterday to believe it, though. The whole places _screams_ 'House of Crooks and Liars', darling, and don't get me _started_ on the grape juice."), Cruella had grown impatient waiting around, and so had bribed one of the employees ("My best cigarette case, and an heirloom at that! That ditzy filly will keep party pills in it, make no mistake, I know the type.") to show her some secret way out of the hotel ("It was like some scene in a dime store paperback, darling, I would have coughed my guts out on that infernal ladder, but luckily none of their food is worth eating anyway, so no worry about that,").

"Why didn't you bring Jafar?" Riku asked as he negotiated Betty around a surprisingly treacherous hairpin turn.

"Why, do you miss him?" Cruella rolled her eyes flagrantly, "We had a few differences of opinion, he and I. Just add another tick to the list of undependable men," she brushed her hand again over the red mark on her forehead, and Riku felt a shiver past through him.

He couldn't quite imagine Jafar, straitlaced and clinical as he was, hitting anybody, even someone as admittedly obnoxious as Cruella. Then again, he'd also had an inappropriate affair with his paralegal, so there were hidden depths.

"I've still got some faith in you, boy," Cruella added, "Don't prove me wrong."

After her escape from the hotel, she'd set off through the tunnels, ("Good to know our tax money goes into making fully-livable walk-in sewers, darling. And here I thought it was being put to waste!") and followed the noise of men yelling to where she'd finally encountered Riku, Seifer and Detective Leonhart.

"…and your pretty redheaded girl, of course," she added dismissively, "Pity she didn't want to tag along."

"Yeah," Riku said flatly, "pity."

He half expected Cruella to give him some other platitude about how Ariel wasn't his responsibility, how he should stop crucifying himself over her, or whatever, but she merely made a little humming sound and announced, "Keep this way, darling. Lift's coming up."

It wasn't like he could keep any other way at this point, though. The tunnel had been going one way for some time now, gradually widening out as they progressed. Riku figured he may have been imagining it, but the ground seemed to have been gradually slanting upward as well.

A good sign, depending on your definition of 'good'.

"You're not gonna ask me?" he said at length.

"Ask you what?"

"About…what _I_ was doing, after I came down here. What I was up to."

"I figured you didn't want to talk about it. Men don't talk about themselves the way women do." She curled her lips, "But you _are_ a queer duck sort of a man, I'll grant you that. Well? What have you been up to?"

Riku figured he could build up to the whole point, be dramatic and showy and flashy the way Cruella had been, but it struck him that maybe she was right, to a point. Try as he might, he couldn't think of a lot of ways to dress up what had happened to him. Whether that made him boring or insincere or unfeeling, Riku had no idea.

So he began in the most succinct way he could think of, "I…I went to the whorehouse."

Cruella laughed heartily, as though Riku had just told an excellent joke, "Whorehouse, you say? And here I was, thinking you were the most disgustingly pleasant biker thug I've ever come across."

"No, it wasn't like _that_ …"

"Oh, cool your head, darling. I expect nothing less of a brash young man out in the world with more money than he knows what to do with. Everyone's got needs."

Riku barreled on, "…I got this idea it might be where Kairi was. I thought I could…I dunno, find her. Rescue her. Something." He shrugged, "I was wrong."

"Pfft," Cruella sniffed dismissively, "No one ever finds what they're looking for in whorehouses, darling. I told my father the same thing, once. Daddy never listened to me, though and look where we are now."

She sighed tremendously, looking up at the expanse ahead of them, "Here we are, darling. The surface world awaits."

Two sturdy steel doors blocked off the end of the passage. From far away, Riku wouldn't even have called them doors, they looked more like construction barricades, but there was a seam between them, if you squinted.

"Surface world…" he repeated softly, slowing Betty down to a halt just in front of the lift.

"That _is_ what I said, yes, darling. I never had any use for parakeets."

"Sora's down here," he added, "I don't know about Kairi, but Sora's definitely here. Seifer and Leonhart…"

"You mean those two beauty boys with the matching face? Really, you _must_ introduce me to the company you keep, darling…"

"They were going to try rescuing him."

"Well, good for the boy, and a load off your back, I'm sure." Cruella slid off of Betty and started toward the lift entrance, "Aren't you glad? This _is_ a good thing, yes?"

Wasn't it? _Someone_ was going to try and rescue Sora; Riku didn't need to spend another second down here, guilting himself into action.

And yet that guilt was still there, gnawing a hole in his gut.

Cruella had pulled a switch in the wall, causing the lift to open with a steady grinding of metal against metal. The elevator beyond was composed of crudely-wrought chain links, without a proper four walls, stuffed into the granite shaft.

"More than enough room for you, and the hog too," Cruella announced, stepping aside to allow Riku to drive slowly into the lift, shaking a little in his seat as Betty bumped over the narrow gap between the ground and the lift itself.

Cruella sashayed her way in behind him, pulling another lever on the inside of the lift to close the doors.

"One speed only, I suppose," she said dismissively, tugging another lever in the corner of the lift.

Without further ado, they began slowly inching up the shaft, producing so much racket Riku was certain the whole of the Underworld could hear.

They passed one or two sets of closed doors that must be other levels, but Cruella had turned the switch to its extreme end. They would go nonstop all the way to the top.

"Where does this thing come out, exactly?" he asked Cruella after they passed the third pair of doors.

"Some rotting warehouse, near as I can figure," Cruella shrugged, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were cold, "We'll be easy travels from there."

Something about the placid assuredness with which she said that make Riku doubletake, "And…how do you know this, again?"

Cruella turned to face him, her painted lips curling into a slow, rictus-like grin, "Oh…darling. Too clever by half, but not clever enough for me."

The lift came to a stop at the very top level.

"This once," Cruella pulled a switch near the doors, which opened smoothly, revealing a room that may have been palatial, if it didn't have so much in common with a very expensive crypt.

The walls and floor were done in tiles of black marble inlaid with copper, stretching on down a narrow hallway (parallel rows of pillars, to boot) up a short set of stairs to a larger area, where Riku could just glimpse a few leather chairs.

Riku reached for the knife he'd had stashed away in his hoodie, but Cruella had already pulled her pistol on him and, however harmless it was, Riku was doubtful enough of where they were to try anything just yet.

"Now, now, darling…" she drawled, nudging him forward, "We've been getting on so well, and I would _really_ hate to put a hole in that precious face of yours."

"You set me up." Riku said coldly, not moving an inch.

"That she did," came a new, but not entirely foreign voice, some amalgamation of a P.R executive and a stand-up comedian, "Gotta admit, I didn't think she'd have such an easy time of it."

The man standing at the top of the steps was tall, broad-shouldered and imposing, dressed in a black and navy suit exquisitely tailored for his frame. He studied Riku with keen, knowing eyes that twinkled almost perversely in an otherwise stony, lined face.

Hades, self-styled Lord of the Underworld. Were it not for the slimy politesse he used to address Riku, he may well have been entirely different from the man he and Ariel had glimpsed in Bluebird's room.

"I got him to you, didn't I?" Cruella said breezily, ushering Riku into the hall proper, "At _great_ risk to my personal health, I might add."

"Oh yeah?" Hades looked Cruella up and down, his eye at last falling on the mark on her forehead, "Ohh..." he cracked a grin, "Domestic dispute?"

"You can't domesticate a scarecrow. I swear, that spindly civic servant's got less warmth in him than a halibut."

"So I hear," Hades replied easily, returning his attention to Riku, "Well, come on. We keep standing here, at least _one_ of us is probably gonna pass out."

Before Riku could react, Hades had wrapped a firm, strong arm around his shoulder, starting down the hall to the stairs, which led up into an octagonal room that looked like a cross between an office and an airport lounge.

Two of the seven walls had leather sofas up against them. Two had polished bookshelves in the same black marble as the rest of the place. One had a wet bar, fully stocked with bottles behind a glass-fronted cabinet. The sixth wall featured an antique-looking grand piano, and the seventh, directly across from the stairs featured a desk of dark wood, probably ebony, littered with a chaotic assortment of papers, stationary and knickknacks.

"Please, please," Hades gestured to the sofas, "Make yourselves at home. _Me casa e su casa_."

He steered Riku toward one of the couches, half dropping and half shoving him down onto the leather cushions. Before Riku could so much as blink, Cruella dropped to sit alongside him, crossing her legs the way she had when she'd first come in to see him at the Hollow, and told him the story of Maleficent's niece.

"Can I wet your whistles?" Hades was already starting for the bar, "I know Cruella's always thirsty,"

"Oh, bugger off," she said amicably, rummaging in her purse for a cigarette, "You know, I dropped my little thingy back at the place."

"How far we've come as a species," Hades marveled from the other side of the bar where he was already getting out glasses, "Cruella, anyone ever told ya you could win a Pulitzer?"

Cruella sneered in Hades' general direction, fetching a cigarette from her purse, "Ever get that lighter, back, darling? You said it was in your bike, remember?"

Riku was surprised _she_ did.

"Why should I give you anything?" he asked, not even looking at her.

Cruella frowned, looking for a half second actually sympathetic, "Oh, darling, you mustn't get to sulking like that. There was nothing _personal_ , and really, I _have_ grown such a taste for you."

"You've been lying to me this entire time!" he inched himself as far down the sofa from her as he could, "You're working for _him_!" he nodded over to Hades, who was doing a very poor job of pretending he couldn't hear them as he shook a cocktail shaker directly adjacent to his head.

"Wrong on both counts," Cruella declared, twirling the cigarette between two fingers as if it were some kind of baton, "If anyone was lying to you it was your very own dusty excuse for a mother and all her cronies and ass lickers."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure by now Maleficent was lying about a lot of things," Riku allowed, " _You_ still pretended to…"

"…and to answer your other question, I work for myself." She smiled with a put-upon air of pride.

"Nice way of saying you can't trust her more than you can throw her." Hades quipped, crossing over to the sofa with a drinks glass in each hand, "I don't know about you, kid, but I think I could manage a few meters."

"What do you want?" Riku demanded.

"What, you don't know metric?" Hades raised his eyebrows.

"What do you want from _me_ …or from Maleficent? I know you want to hold me ransom. What do you want from her?"

"Cuts right to the chase," Hades nodded approvingly, "I can appreciate that in a guy. You run a place like this long enough, you realize everyone's all about _speeches_.You'd think we were runnin' some fruity poetry showcase. I always like to get down to brass tacks."

"That a hint?" Cruella asked, accepting one of the glasses from Hades' hands and shaking it around, "One sip of this, and you get a nasty little prick in your throat? Been there, done that, darling."

She chuckled, slapping Riku lightly on the knee with her free hand, as if inviting him to share the joke. Figuring that Hades' air of warm approachability was a limited time engagement, Riku accepted the glass, and eyed the dark red cocktail skeptically.

"It's a Persephone," Hades explained, as if that was supposed to answer all Riku's questions,  
"Two parts pomegranate juice, one part vodka, and a spritz of ginger ale just to be fancy."

"Sounds spiffing," remarked Cruella drily, taking a tiny sip, "Tell me, do you _ever_ do any of that 'mob kingpin' business, or is your workday just thinking of puns from Aesop's Fables?"

" _Greek Myths_ ," insisted Hades, his smile not slipping an inch.

"If this is some fancy way of proposing, I'm sorry to burst your bubble."

"Yes, yes, very funny, shut up," Hades turned to Riku, "Well? Have a sip, tell me what you think."

Riku eyed the glass, taking a whiff of the cocktail itself. It smelled like pomegranates…Riku recognized it from one of Mim's many alternative moisturizing lotions.

"I don't think so," he decided, "If I drink, you'll never let me leave."

Cruella rolled her eyes and muttered something about men that Riku wasn't sure made much sense, while Hades threw back his head and laughed uproariously.

" _I'd never let you leave!_ " he slapped his thigh, looking back at Riku, his eyes watering in mirth, "Christ, what a smartass you are. You sure you're not Maleficent's bio kid, after all?"

He waved his hand dismissively, moving to sit behind his desk, "Now. You've got a lot of questions."

"Where's Sora?"

Hades stopped, short, his smile fading, "What?"

"Sora. The guy you kidnapped in my place. I know you know who I mean."

"Oh." Hades nodded, "Yeah. Him. Word of advice, ease up with the macho man shtick, it's fooling no one and it gives me gas." He crossed his legs, crossing his hands in front of him on the desktop, "Your friend's fine. Making himself right at home here. Today, if I'm not mistaken, he makes his debut in the world of sport!"

 _The world of…_ Riku recalled a snatch of conversation, from when he and Ariel had first overheard Squall and Seifer talking.

"You mean the Coliseum? The…the fighting ring?" He'd assumed the place had been closed down years ago, when he was still a kid, but at this point its reopening ranked among the less surprising things that had happened to him since he'd come down here.

"The very one."

Riku imagined Sora: Destiny High football champ Sora, always with that easygoing grin and gamesome 'we can win this!' spirit. He was the face of the team, even if he wasn't the captain.

What had Riku done to him, condemning him to a place like this? A place like _that_ , where the only games you could play had as good a chance of ending in death or maiming as they did in a champion title.

"He shouldn't be here."

"Oh, I agree with you, believe me. If it wasn't for little angels whispering in my ear, I'd have killed him the moment he came down to me." He shrugged, "Angels _suck_ sometimes, right?"

"Let him go!" Riku demanded, rising to his feet and crossing to stand before the desk, "I'll stay here, do whatever you want me to do, but let him go. This has nothing to do with him."

"I must say, it's absolutely _winning_ how he sticks up for the little goober, isn't it?" Cruella asked from where she was still sitting on the couch, "Gives one some hope in the next generation."

Hades leaned back in his chair with a little 'hmm' sound, "An _impassioned_ defense. I can appreciate an impassioned defense, Riku,"

The name sounded almost like some other language the way Hades said it.

"And it's saved a few skins in my time," he opened an engraved ebony box on the desk and withdrew a thin cigar, with an unfamiliar brand label, "I'll think it over. Now whaddaya say you sit your angsty little tuckus down and we have a chat like civilized gents," he winked at Cruella, lighting his cigar with a flick of a match, "And lady."

"Care to spare a light for me, or is the Lord of Stiffs going to stiff me this whole night?" Cruella drawled.

"In your dreams," Hades chuckled around the cigar in his mouth, as Cruella rolled her eyes in revulsion, "I'll get to your questions, don't anyone worry about that."

He did stand up, though, crossing toward Cruella with the matchbook. He crossed the room in three quick strides, the smoke from his cigar curling around his head like a cloud.

"First, a bit of a debrief is in order."

"A debrief?" Riku was getting fed up with this. Maleficent, Jafar, Cruella, even Seifer…all with their word games, their lies of omission, their persistent toying with their food.

 _And who said a rescue mission had to be all about the bravery and the derring-do?_ He thought sardonically, _You stick a toe out of line and you're not the only one who pays for it._

So, if only to preserve his promise to get Sora out of this, Riku held still, stepping enough away from the desk so that Hades needn't assume he was messing with anything, but close enough if Riku needed, say, an improvised piece of stationary-turned weapon, or an unimaginative place to hide behind.

"It's been a busy, _busy_ day in my homegrown subterranean Metropolis," he grinned at Riku, "Thanks for all the glowing praise of it, by the way, really warmed my heart."

"Cut to the chase, you Devil," said Cruella impatiently, "Before the _real_ Underworld comes calling." She shook the cigarette impatiently.

"Ah, of course," Hades struck a match, leaning forward to lit the cigarette, "Sorry. I get so carried away sometimes."

He promptly backhanded Cruella as he was just inches from her face, sending her crashing to the floor. In almost the same fluid motion, Hades seized the pistol from the cushion where Cruella had placed it, training it on her with a cold maliciousness.

Riku took a step forward, instinctively trying to get between Hades and Cruella.

"Not another step, kiddo," Hades said without even looking his way, "This is no business of yours."

Cruella scrambled to face Hades, pressing a hand to her face where he'd struck her. The cocktail glass had shattered over the floor, and Cruella was stained a pinkish red in several places with Persephone.

"The bleeding _hell_ are you trying to do?" she exclaimed, trying to right herself, but falling back against the sofa as Hades pressed the pistol to be just a few inches above her face, cornering her against the wall.

"I've got a coupla problems on my hands, Cruella," said Hades, suddenly genial and polite again.

"Then ring up a shrink!" she spat, "I can recommend a couple."

"I've got no doubt about that." He continued, walking in slow circles around Cruella, like a lion circling its prey, "But my problem's a more…professional one. Our mutual lickspittle lawyer friend is no longer among us, I'm afraid." He cocked his head to the side, "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"Wait, _Jafar_?" asked Riku, unable to stop himself, "Jafar's dead?"

"I'm asking the questions, kid, and the questions aren't for you to answer." Hades returned his attention to Cruella, "Well?"

"Dead, is he?" Cruella laughed incredulously, "You don't think _I_ did it? The man was a ruddy lecher and a worm besides, but I wasn't going to spare the time of day to _kill_ him!"

"We already checked the security tapes. Not a soul in or out of that room until…" he chuckled lightly, "…until well after the deed must've been done. Now, someone _did_ open the access entrance, in the wall…"

Cruella hesitated, and Hades' smile spread across his face, "We got ahold of one of our patchwork girls. She tells a pretty story...not as pretty as… _this_."

He reached into his jacket pocket with one hand, flashing an ornate, monogrammed cigarette case. Cruella let out a sharp gasp.

"Ruddy bitch doesn't know a damn thing she's talking about. I gave her that trinket so she would show me that little secret way out. Jafar was off drowning himself in the shower, or some such, and you can rest bloody well knowing that I closed the hidey hatch behind me when I made my grand escape. Someone else must've come in that way…I'm sure you've got no shortage of goons that know how it all works."

Riku may have imagined it, but Hades' composure flickered momentarily, a wave of some darker emotion passing over him. Insecurity? Nervousness? Fear? Whatever it was, it was gone as soon as it had appeared.

"You know what, Cruella? You haven't exactly given me a lotta reasons to trust you, have you?"

"Oh, _bull_!" Cruella attempted to rise to her feet, only stumbling and falling again, "Don't you try and play me for a fool, you snake! This is just your neat little way of squirming out of our deal, cheating me out of what's mine! Ten to one, you had one of your killers-for-hire do in for Jafar just so you could pin it all on me!"

"Cruella, _what_ an idea! You know I have nothing to gain if Jafar dies…does Maleficent really need one more reason to get her nips in a knot, really?" he gestured lazily toward Riku with the pistol.

"You're mad! Balmier than a Bermudan beach."

"Me?" Hades laughed, " _I'm_ mad? Me? _I'm_ not the one who's resorted to kidnapping, extortion and, dare I suggest _murder_ all for some swanky nightclub."

"Don't you dare!" Cruella looked like a caged animal, her eyes blazing, her mouth twisted into an expression of almost supernatural distaste, "You promised me, you _promised me_ I could have the Dalman back!"

"I did," Hades agreed, "With that one...particular caveat that nobody got hurt."

"And no one did, not on my account, so don't you say a peep otherwise!"

"That's enough!" Riku had been getting kind of sick to his stomach watching all this, never mind trying to piece together whatever it was these two were talking about, "You said you appreciate a passionate defense, right?" he nodded over at Cruella on the floor, the raw new bruise on her face where Hades had struck her.

"Well? Let her defend herself."

Hades smiled coldly, "Quite the gallant, are ya, son? I'm getting the hot flashes already."

"Leave him off it!" insisted Cruella, lifting herself to lean against the sofa. Riku, feeling none too happy about it, reached out to take her arm and help her get steady, "You hurt him, this whole pretty catastrophe was for nothing."

"Oh, not to worry...I wouldn't hurt a single shiny hair on that head of yours, kid," Hades winked at Riku, "And, you know what? You've got a point." he turned the pistol back on Cruella, "Sing, darling. Sing a song, make it simple, make it long. But make it _good_."

Cruella looked Riku out of the corner of her eye, and there was something like a little nod, maybe even a tiny twitch that might have been a smile of thanks. Unsure how to respond to that, Riku nodded at her in return.

"I've said all I need to say," Cruella began, "if you believe it, and I don't see why you wouldn't. I'm no idiot, whatever people think of me; I'm not gonna up and kill a man and make sure I leave my secret escape door open behind me! More likely I'd find some other unpleasant sap to pin it on... Sound familiar, darling?"

"Oh yes," Hades nodded, "Very familiar. I'm...I'm glad you saw that too. I worry sometimes, about my memory slipping. I'm not getting any younger." He lowered the pistol, "Well, then."

Cruella straightened uneasily, catching her breath, "Well, then," she echoed, "Is this kangaroo court at an end, or should I reenact my dramatic escape for the news..."

Hades lifted the pistol as quickly as he'd lowered it, training it on Cruella in the same motion as he pulled the trigger.

Cruella leaped back with a short cry. The barrel clicked...nothing happened.

There was a tense silence that seemed to last forever. At last, Riku found himself saying, "...there aren't anymore bullets in that gun."

"Yes..." Hades nodded, clicking open the cartridge of the pistol to have a peek inside, "Yes, that seems to be case, doesn't it?"

He snapped the cartridge shut again and looked back up at Cruella and Riku, his face splitting into a grin as he laughed like some jolly old uncle.

"Heh..." Cruella began, "Jesus, fuck he's nuts," as she lapsed into a round of hysterical laughter all her own.

"Good thing, good thing, that!" Hades laughed, slapping his thigh with the pistol, "I lose my head sometimes...wouldn't have wanted to make a mess I'd regret."

He tossed the pistol across the room, turning back toward Cruella and, before Riku knew what was happening, producing a revolver from his blazer and firing off a shot before he was even properly facing her.

There was an earsplitting bang, barely even a whimper from the woman next to Riku and, before he knew what was happening, he'd been blasted backward onto the cold marble on the floor, splattered across his face and front with something wet and warm and sticky.

A thud from nearby, and Riku glimpsed a sprawled, grayish-pale hand inches from his head, impossibly long scarlet nails splayed heavenward. One finger twitched, as though possessed, once, twice...and then stilled.

Riku blinked, breathing heavily as he tried to lift himself to a sitting position. He heard a sigh and something like a tut-tutting noise and suddenly Hades was standing above him, the smoking gun in his hand and an impersonal smirk on his face.

"Word of advice, kid," he explained, pressing one foot down on Riku's stomach with enough force that Riku convulsed sharply, his vision going in and out of focus.

"You don't _tell_ the Lord of the Dead to do things. You can't _tell_ Death anything...hell, you can't even _ask_. You let Death do whatever Death damn well pleases and _count yourself lucky_ Death still needs to have you around."

Riku could smell hot cordite from the barrel of the gun, mixing with the cologne Hades wore, and the faint, but very present stink of viscera and death that was slowly but surely beginning to make itself present in the room.

A little bell rang somewhere close by, and Riku recognized the sound of the lift opening at the end of the hall.

"No sign of our two flown birds," said a clear, prim voice, "but here's two older birds come back to the nest."

The quick clip of footsteps against the marble slowed to a walk, then a full stop, "Ah. I see I'm interrupting something."

"Not at all," Hades didn't even look away from Riku, "Just finishing up."

He lifted his foot from Riku's chest, kicking him sharply in the side as though he were a disobedient dog.

Riku tried to sit up, but his whole body ached, as if he'd just come from under a bed of rocks. He lifted one hand to his gut, and saw how covered in blood it was...blood that wasn't his, all up and down his body.

He lifted his eyes to better observe the newcomers, but somehow he couldn't bring his gaze past the prone form of the woman who, just an hour ago, had been loud, reactionary, entirely irreverent and unflappable. A woman who, in just a few seconds, had been reduced to a cooling husk on the ground, lying in a puddle of her own insides.

"Well, well, as I _live and breathe_..." Hades began, turning his attention to the new people, "If it isn't my favorite Hardboiled Pretty Boy Detective...and his gorgeous sidekick, too!"

"Fuck off!" Seifer always _had_ possessed a knack for not knowing when to sit and take it.

"Much as I'd love to, friend, I _do_ have a schedule for today." he pointed first at Seifer, then to the man next to him who, Riku could begin to make out, was indeed Squall, "You know...I never thought I'd see _you_ boys together again. What's the occasion?"

Squall was looking at the body on the floor, "Who is this?"

"Swatch for a new carpet. Pretty, no?"

"Sloppy of you, Hades," Squall noted, "You kill people in your own office, now?"

"Now, now detective, I'm _offended_ at the presumption!" Hades leaned back against the desk, crossing his legs in front of him, "Whoever said _I_ killed anyone? You have, I hope, noticed our guest."

He tapped against the prone form of Riku with his heel, prompting Riku to scowl and struggle to his feet, going to lean against a nearby bookcase adorned with more tacky brick-a-brack than books.

Riku noticed Squall look at him askance, though his face remained inscrutable as ever. For the first time, Riku could see the third man, the one who'd led Squall and Seifer in. A tall, trim looking guy in a tailored suit. He looked less like a businessman or a banker, more like some celebrity's security detail. A glint in his ears drew Riku's attention to his earrings.

When he spoke, though, he sounded nothing less than commanding, smooth, placating all at once, "Much as I enjoy a good Whodunit, there _are_ matters of import to discuss, Hades."

"In good time."

"And what better time than now?" his tone indicated he would broke no argument.

Hades scowled interminably, "Fine. Crick, Crock," he nodded at Squall and Seifer respectively, "Over by Pretty Boy. Don't get any ideas."

"Shouldn't be difficult!" but Riku wasn't sure if Seifer was insulted himself, Squall, or Hades.

"You couldn't find them?" demanded Hades, "It's not like they've got a lot of options, how the _hell_ did you lose them?"

"They had a head start,remember." explained the man, "And I'm inclined to doubt they make the best traveling companions."

Seifer and Leonhart took a position to either side of Riku. Seifer gave Riku a look, "Hey...you okay?"

Riku gave him a murderous glare and shrank away. Seifer fell back, "Fine."

"What're they talking about?" he asked the other two, sotto voice.

To Riku's surprise, Leonhart actually answered him, "They lost someone, but that's all I got from Luxord. Someone danger..."

A blaring siren call rent through the room, echoing from somewhere below them. Seifer gave a little jump and Riku found himself jolted to attention, but the others merely hesitated, with Hades running his hand down his face as if in exasperation.

"You only sound the alarm _now_?" he raised his voice to be heard over the blare.

"You yourself said not to raise an alarm unless there was an immediate danger!" retorted the man, Luxord, "Evidently, it's now immediate."

"Don't get smart with me!" Hades slammed his hand against the desk, "We can't _afford_ this, not now."

"I'll be sure to schedule the next disaster for a more convenient time, then," said Luxord smoothly.

"We've got a few hundred blood-hungry schlubs in the stands today..."

"The Coliseum has been quarantined," Luxord continued, "I gave the Captain the order."

"What a blessed goddamn comfort!" Hades seized a marble paperweight (a crow, Riku noticed) and hurled it across the room, where it crashed into a glass-fronted cabinet filled with gaudy period collectibles.

"Do you intend to explain to me what _this_ is," Luxord nodded over at Cruella on the floor, "Or shall I just add it to the list of messes I have to tidy up?"

Seifer was staring curiously across the office, "I got an idea."

Leonhart turned to look at him, "Lay it on me."

Seifer socked him in the face, sending him falling backward into Riku with bodily force.

"And that's what you get, you titshit!" Seifer exclaimed boldly, backing away from Leonhart with a triumphant fire in his eyes.

"Save your couple's spat for outside," Hades snarled, "The adults are talking."

"You've got me all wrong!" Seifer insisted, wide-eyed, looking from Hades to Luxord, "I'm on _your_ side!"

"We don't have time for this," said Luxord.

"Yeah, o'course you don't...no one ever has time for the low life thug, right?"

"You said it, not me," said Hades.

"I just do your dirty work, and that's all I'm good for, right?"

"Not even," Hades nodded at Riku, who was disentangling himself from underneath Squall, "You may have noticed, but _you_ didn't bring that one to me." he indicated Cruella's body by the sofa, "She did. If you want to share in her reward, I can make it happen, though. I'm feeling generous."

"You don't scare me!" Seifer retorted.

Hades pointed the revolver at him, and Seifer stepped back, his face working, "I can tell you everything." he pointed over at Squall, "'Bout him and what he's doin' here."

"The hell is he _doing_?" demanded Squall in a hushed voice, crawling off of Riku, pressing one hand to his nose where Seifer had punched him.

 _That_ caught Riku off guard, "What, you don't know? Evasion maneuver. Comes in handy when cops are following you."

Riku could recall multiple instances of Seifer pulling this same trick, cornering whatever trooper had been tailing them on the highway that afternoon, pulling the whole 'persecuted subculture' card (not in so many words, of course) while the others headed off in the opposite direction or, in one memorable occasion, into a convenience store just half a block away for a midnight splurge.

" _Gotta give him credit,_ " Axel had quipped, stuffing his pockets full of cigarettes and chip bags, " _He can lie like nobody's business._ "

Squall gave Riku a look, but seemed to understand.

"Fine," Hades spread his arms wide as Luxord sighed, "you've got me hooked. Let's see if you can reel me in."

Riku looked experimentally at Squall, who nodded, stepping forward with his fists clinched, "Shut your mouth Seifer, or I'll shut it up for you."

He took Seifer by the collar, his other hand poised as if to strike him. Luxord moved forward, as if to diffuse the fight, but Hades shook his head, smiling softly. He was enjoying himself.

The blaring of the Klaxon sirens continued somewhere beneath them, like a particularly bland soundtrack. Riku thought he could hear people too…muttering, arguing…a huge crowd, all assembled together in some shared confusion, panic.

 _A crowd…_ he thought, _An audience._

Riku started inching slowly around the perimeter of the office, moving slowly but surely closer to the desk.

"Why should I?" demanded Seifer, "Huh? This ain't _any_ of my business, until you decided you'd make a patsy outta me!"

"And a damn challenge _that_ was!" Squall shoved forward, sending Seifer falling against the shattered cabinet, where gaudy antiques tumbled from the shelves around him.

"Watch it," Hades cautioned, "I paid good money for one or two of those things."

Riku stole behind the desk and, very carefully, reached for the knife in his belt.

"Hades," Luxord's voice, startled, his steely composure momentarily ruffled, "The boy…"

"Which one?" Hades asked carelessly.

Riku lunged up onto the desk, yanking Hades back by his jacket, pressing the edge of the knife against his throat.

"Criminal mastermind you are _not_ ," Riku spoke right into his ear, relishing the look of strangulated anger and surprise on Hades' face, "You really _fell_ for that?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself kid," Hades cautioned, his grip already tightening around his revolver, "Any sudden moves, and the Beauty Boys meet an unfortunate end, indeed."

That gave Riku pause. He looked up at Squall, standing squarely in front of the desk, staring down the barrel of the gun.

"Can't kill two birds with one stone, big guy," Seifer spoke from over by the cabinet, prompting both Riku and Hades to turn, the latter so that Riku's knife almost broke the skin.

Seifer had retrieved one of the weapons from the cabinet…an elaborate brass-lacquered blunderbuss, which he held over his shoulder, as if it were a rocket launcher.

"You shoot him, I shoot you."

Hades scoffed, struggling against Riku's admittedly slackening grip, "That thing isn't even loaded!"

"Yeah? How do you know?"

"Because it's _mine_ , you idiot!" Hades spat, "Now drop it!"

"Not until you drop yours, Big Guy," Seifer collected another weapon from the pile around his feet…a broadsword, with leather grip and a honed double edge, which he tossed lightly to Squall, who caught it with a surprising effortless, almost as if he was used to it.

"There's a word for this set-up, you know," Seifer boasted, " _Standoff_."

Squall gave Seifer a look out of the corner of his eye, but returned his attention fairly quickly to Hades, raising the sword so it pointed just inches from his heart.

"Drop the gun, Hades," said Squall flatly, "You're outnumbered."

A clicking, a gun barrel cocking, "A hearty mind is worth more than three hunks of dumb muscle, I always say."

Luxord was standing behind Squall, a gun of his own pressed against Squall's head, "One more move, Detective, and I pull this trigger."

"Yeah?" Riku spoke up, "Go ahead. This'll just take one little cut," he traced the knife again over Hades' throat.

"Keep talkin', kid," Hades snarled, "Every word outta your mouth, the less convinced I am you're gonna do anything."

Riku became aware that his hand was shaking over the knife. He _could_ kill Hades, right now, even if it imperiled Squall's life.

He could _kill_ someone…someone who'd caused so much pain, so much suffering, all for profit, all to build his own twisted, decrepit version of paradise.

He remembered Bluebird's begging, the flippant, glib way Hades had left her room, as if he were just a husband heading out for a late shift at the office.

"I saw you." Riku heard himself say, as if from miles away.

"…saw me? Saw me what?"

"At the Grotto. You and some girl…blue eyes, blue hair…you called her Bluebird."

"Peeping Tom, eh?" Hades laughed drily, "Wouldn't have pegged you for the type."

"What did you do to her?"

"Oh, must we get into _that_? You're an adult, do the math."

Riku dug the knife slightly into the flesh of Hades's neck, prompting him to cry out, blood bubbling above and below the blade.

"I'll kill him!" Luxord cried, pulling Squall up against him so that the broadsword was lowered to his side.

But all that seemed to be happening in some other world, far removed from Riku. There was a whistling in his ears, an almost uncontrollable feeling of power.

 _He could make Hades pay. For Bluebird. For all of them._

"Don't play dumb," he said sharply, "She could barely talk. She didn't even know where she was."

"Oh yeah? And who said _I_ did that to her, huh?" Hades looked defiantly over at Riku, blood dribbling down his neck to darken the otherwise pristine white of his collar, "Might it be I just found her that way, maybe patched her up best I could? Mended a broken wing or two,"

"You're lying."

"So are you." Hades looked down at the knife, "You're not gonna kill me."

"Step away from him," Luxord say again, digging the barrel of the revolver deeper into Squall's temple, "I _will_ shoot."

Riku stared at Luxord, at Squall's impassive face. Squall was searching him too, Riku could tell, much the same way Ariel had been earlier.

Ariel…if he'd stayed with her, if he hadn't gone with Cruella…

 _Nothing but mistakes. Mistakes, regrets, so much guilt…_

"Riku," Squall said placidly, "Riku, we can get out of this. Drop the knife. Let him go."

' _We'll get out of this. I promise._ ' Another voice, vaguely remembered, recalled itself to Riku's mind.

He blinked, the room suddenly seeming to shift in focus around him.

"Wh-what…" Riku heard himself say, feeling the knife shaking in his hand, hearing Squall's voice, and another that may have been a million miles away, a million years apart for all Riku knew.

' _You're not going to die for me._ '

Riku heard a cry and a crash and, before he quite realized it, he'd flung Hades aside to the floor. He dropped the knife, breathing heavily, his head pounding, his heart racing against his ribs.

"There," he heard Luxord speak, "Now that we're all finished grandstanding, can we _please_ …"

"Riku, you idiot, look out!"

Riku looked up, alerted by Seifer's cry, just in time to see Hades, one hand pressed to the wound on his neck, snatch up the dropped knife and lunge for him, face contorted into an expression of almost animalistic fury.

Out of the corner of his eye, Riku saw Seifer pull the trigger on the blunderbuss.

It was loaded, alright. And it wasn't a blunderbuss.

One bright flash of light, an earsplitting boom, and everything seemed to be blasted backward, and out…

But out into what?

* * *

The Coliseum was shaped like a drum: a giant granite cylinder carved out of the earth, walls rising, ten, twenty, thirty, forty...fifty feet up to a cavern ceiling, so far ahead it was shrouded entirely in darkness.

Benches ringed the walls, rippling up like some sort of uneven layer cake, with the only break among them being a solid stone pillar that ran through the north end of the structure, its only ornament an open terrace over which the words ' _IN PUGNA, VERITAS_ ' engraved a foot high.

Sora only had a few minutes to take it all in, but all his senses had, as Cloud had predicted, gone into a kind of overdrive. He could feel the blood thundering in his ears, hear his breath quickening in his throat, his hands clenching and unclenching in anticipation for whatever would happen next.

 _You're not gonna die, you're not gonna die, you're not gonna die..._ and, overlaying that mantra, a voice that more closely resembled his mother, _Fine, then. How?_

Sora was still working on that.

He stood at the south end of the ring, positioned in front of a narrow postern gate barred over with wrought iron bars. Rai stood at the east end, shining a burnished copper color, as promised. He had his arms crossed, looking imperiously up and down the ring, occasionally smirking up into the stands, as if he recognized a familiar face or something. Fuu stood at the west entrance, looking impassively out from beneath her dramatically cut bangs, as if this was all some lame company picnic she couldn't wait to escape from.

She and Rai had agreed on some sort of alliance, Sora had gathered. He wasn't entirely sure what the story was with them, or how reliable the assumption was, but he was pretty sure neither of them much wanted to share the winner's circle with him.

On the ground dead center of the ring were three crude weapon: a cudgel banded in old elastic, a dented sheet of warped metal that may as well once been a car door, and a rusty sword, curved with one blade like something in the _Arabian Nights_ : a scimitar.

Sora could run, though. That was his thing, right?

"My friends," Sora could see the Captain standing at the terrace directly opposite him, speaking into some sort of microphone that broadcast his words across the whole Coliseum. One of his hands clutched at the railing, the other gestured lazily around at the stands, as if he fancied he could scratch half the audience away with a swipe of that claw of his.

"In many ways, these games of ours are a celebration of life," a few exasperated groans and mutterings from the stands, but the Captain kept on, "We start at the bottom, beset on all sides by primal, mindless threats...and as we mature, as we grow, as we come to better understand ourselves..."

Even so far below, across a sprawling stadium, Sora could see the predatory grin on the Captain's face, "...we grow stronger, more competent, more skilled...and as we grow, so do the threats and challenges that beset us. The strong survive, and the weak..." he chuckled, "I am sure you can complete the picture. And, for those of you who cannot..."

Ripple of laughter, and at least one, "Go and shove yourself!"

"...here is a live demonstration to that effect. Ladies and gentlemen: colleagues, honored friends... I present to you our first seed! Man, man, woman..." pause for dramatic effect, "and a horde of our most ferocious hellhounds."

There was a chorus of cheering, rowdy shouts, laughter, people stamping their feet. The walls seemed to shake with the energy of the crowd. Somewhere close by came a rapport of barks and howls, as unceasing and stinging as gunfire.

"And so, my friends, without further ado..." the Captain stepped back from the railing, "Let the games begin."

A metallic screech resounded off the walls as another gate, lower and wider than the others, lifted from the ground beneath the terrace.

There was an instant of petrified tension just after the kennels opened. As if the whole arena was holding its breath. It probably lasted only half a second, but even that was torturous enough.

And then, out from the shadows in those low tunnels, came one, then two, four, six, eight, a dozen hellhounds, barking, howling, growling, their eyes seeming almost to glow with a primal bloodlust.

They seemed so different, so separate from the sad, desperate animals Sora had encountered last night. Yet in some ways, just the same as well.

They fanned out, almost as if they'd coordinated some sort of approach. Four going for Rai, four going for Fuu and four heading right to Sora.

Fuu wasted no time jumping into action. She vaulted, like an Olympic gymnast, over the hellhounds when they were still about half a foot away from her. Her form wasn't perfect, but she managed a sort of half-turn in midair (to the delight of the crowd) before she landed on one knee in the dust, launching to her feet so she could reach the weapons.

 _You alright, there, benchwarmer?_ A shrill voice, more like Tidus than his mother now, came from the back of Sora's head, _If you haven't noticed, you're about to be eaten alive._

As he'd been staring, gobsmacked, at Fuu, Sora had neglected to notice the pack of hellhounds that was charging him. At the last second, Sora felt his reflexes kick in with the very first reaction that occurred to him.

He jumped over the closest hound, as if it were an opposing cornerback standing between him and the endzone. Sora heard a keening growl, felt something warm and sharp against his thigh, but he still made it clear of that nearest hound, scattering the second and the third as he hit the ground.

The fourth one, however, was a crafty little bastard. Sora was already attempting to right himself to his feet when he was dragged back to the ground, pulled from behind, his hoodie suddenly close around his neck as if to throttle him.

Sora's head hit the ground and, for a few seconds, the world above him wavered in and out of focus, a hazy kaleidoscope of particularly uninspiring colors.

He tried sitting up, only to be faced with the snarling, slobbering face of Hound #4, its eyes wide and black in a mottled brown and gold face.

"Ach!" Sora cried, spotting the shred of blue fabric between the hound's teeth. It had grabbed him by the hood, to keep him in one place. Smart _and_ starving. The whole package.

"Uh...hey, boy," he managed, barely hearing his voice above the roaring of the crowd, the muffled commentary of the Captain, and the thundering of his own heart, "Do I get to call a flag?" He nodded up at the piece of fabric in the dog's maw.

The hound reared back, almost as if it was considering it, but Sora could hear the growl in its throat.

Sora was just judging the sanity of taking advantage of this lull to roll out from under Hound #4, when Hound #4 was shaken right off him, by a furry, growling blur that, if Sora wasn't hallucinating, was another hellhound, flying through the air in a compact ball as if it had been thrown.

 _Holy crap..._

He turned onto his uninjured side to see Rai, still at his corner of the arena, slapping his chest like some bronzed up Tarzan pastiche. He was bleeding from a shallow cut on his shoulder, but where four hounds had originally charged him, there was now just one, and it was keeping its distance.

Hellhound #4 was now wrestling with Hellhound #5 (as it only seemed fair to term the one that had been unceremoniously flung into Sora's quarters), the two animals rolling, biting and spitting like they were possessed. It was disquieting, the uncommon violence of the whole thing, as if suddenly they were bent on making a dinner out of _each other_ , and there wasn't a single breathing human in the arena with them.

But Sora didn't have time to ponder the limits of inter-species tolerance. Struggling to his feet, he hastened the rest of the way across the arena to where the weapons were.

Droplets of blood hit the dust in his wake, Sora noticed with mounting panic and confusion. His leg, probably. One of the hellhounds had clawed him or bitten him or something when he made his leap.

 _Not the worst thing to happen. Come on, you've been hurt worse and survived._

There were two weapons in the dirt where there had been three. Sora could make out the crudely-shaped stub of the cudgel and, next to it, the cumbersome, warped rectangle of the car door...

' _Hiss!_ ' a whistling noise in the air just above his head, a sharp metallic tang. Sora dropped to his chest before he was half aware what was happening, and, seeing a shadow bearing down on him in the dust, went for the nearest protection he could.

The car door was heavy, but Sora was at least able to heave it halfway up from the ground just in time to deflect the downward swing of the scimitar in Fuu's hands. The shriek of metal on metal was torture on Sora's ears, and the sudden flare of sparks between his 'weapon' and Fuu's was shocking enough that Sora may have dropped the door, had he not been so aware of how much danger he was in.

He could just make out one half of Fuu's head over the shield, bearing down on him with the scimitar.

"Impressive." she sounded bored, as if she'd been expecting Sora to do that.

"Right?" Sora found himself agreeing, his attention going to the pebbles and silt of the ground, which seemed to be trembling up and down around him, "Thanks."

He pushed forward on the car door just as he felt the oncoming shadow at his back, knocking the unawares Fuu off her feet and onto her petite behind in the dust. The action was so fast that Rai, big and bolloxy as the most atypical lineman, didn't have time to slow and down and catch himself before he lunged, his original attempt obviously some sort of coordinated plan to grab Sora so he and Fuu could share in their victory.

Instead of that, Sora was glad to roll out of the way, allowing Rai to crash headlong into the door, prompting a muffled monosyllabic curse from Fuu beneath it.

Sora started back for the weapons, his mind working at fever pitch.

 _Well, you didn't_ kill _anybody, so congrats on that._

Or was it? Sora knew this circus wouldn't end until _someone_ died. He couldn't keep up with this runaround forever, and he wasn't sure he was enough of a mastermind to pit Fuu and Rai against each other.

He wondered if Cloud was watching all this from the stands: whether he thought Sora was being suitably crafty or not, worthy of the underdog title he had claimed five years before.

But, Sora reasoned, Cloud would probably tell him to stop caring what he thought of him.

The cudgel was still lying in the dirt, neglected. Sora figured it would have to do, and it probably took less know-how than the sword.

He bent down, intent on scooping the weapon up in his hand, when he felt a whoosh of hot air at his back.

Sora whirled around, holding the cudgel clumsily in both hands, like a baseball bat. It was one of the hellhounds. #4, more than likely, given he still had a shred of Sora's hoodie stuck between two of his bared incisors.

"Whoa..." Sora began, taking a careful step back, more aware than ever of the blood trickling down his leg, "Easy, boy..."

He wasn't sure what had happened to Hellhound #5, but judging by the fresh cuts and scrapes, missing patches of fur on #4, he must've put up something of a fight.

"Look, man, I don't wanna hurt you," Sora managed, feeling his voice, hoarse and raw in his throat, "Really. I don't. Believe me, I'm as...I'm as scared as you are, right now."

#4 snarled and, though Sora may well have been imagining things, there seemed to be an undercurrent of hesitation to it, some pause in those dilated, dark pupils.

Sora reached out with his free hand; a sort of 'hold your places' gesture, as he took another step back. Hellhound #4 yapped sharply at that, its attention entirely focused on Sora's hand now.

A memory flashed through Sora's head, quick as blinking. The kindly, almost unsettlingly friendly kennel master, reaching out with his hand so one of the dogs could lick it.

"...the best pal he ever had," Sora found himself repeated dimly.

#4 cocked its head to the side, licking its chops. Somehow, though, this gesture seemed to be the _least_ bloodthirsty action Sora had watched it perform all day.

"You recognize me, don't you, bud?" Sora asked, carefully reaching his free hand out to the hound, the way he'd seen the kennelmaster do it.

"Yeah...yeah, I remember you too. Whaddaya say we call for a cease fire, huh?"

Hellhound #4 ('Best Pal'? It didn't have much of a ring to it.) eyed the hand for a second and, without further ado, gave it a little lick. Sora had been expecting a dry, papery scratching, like when Marie got it into her head to give him a cat bath.

He underestimated the salivation properties of a half-insane murder dog raised to kill. The dog's tongue was warm and wet, yet #4 seemed almost content as he licked Sora's hand.

"Yeah..." Sora said carefully, trying not to sound at all as nervous as he felt, "So...friends, now? Maybe you can put in a good word with your... _Shit_!"

He dropped to a crouch just in time to avoid behind brained by yet another object hurtling through the air to him: the car door, thrown by a dusty, bruised and very angry Rai.

He was smiling, though, if that was any comfort, letting out a triumphant, insane sort of battle laugh, "Now _that's_ what I'm talking about, frosh! Give me a _fight_!"

Fuu stood alongside him, looking far less pleased. She was putting more weight on her right side, so Sora guessed the combined weight of Rai and the sheet metal must have done _some_ damage.

She was still holding the scimitar, though, and looked all too ready to use it.

Sora was ready to launch his next plan of attack (it was rough, but running was a key component, he knew that much), but that was waylaid as the already chaotic noise of the Coliseum was rent by the blaring of harsh, metallic sirens, seeming to come from every direction at once, rebounding off the rounded walls and the high ceiling.

The hellhounds dissolved into a chorus of barks and howls, with a few of them (#4 included) leaping to their hind legs, as if they might just jump up and snatch the noise right out of the air.

At first, Sora thought this was another crazy stunt. Some sort of surprise to make things more interesting, but judging by the growing rumblings of the audience...mixed notes of consternation, confusion, anger and even fear...that wasn't the case either.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the Captain had returned to his perch above the main archway, speaking into his mic with his usual smooth commentator's veneer, "I ask you to remain calm. I have been told that, due to a minor disturbance elsewhere, we are being put on a precautionary lockdown."

That did nothing to calm the masses down. Sora could make out snatches of vocal complaints and condemnations, most prominently, "Precautions? You don't lock down a whole frigging stadium for _precautions_?"

"I assure you all," the Captain said tersely, those very familiar notes of increasing irritation now showing through, "There is no present danger to us here at the moment. This is merely an attempt to neutralize an outside difficulty."

The crowd wasn't buying it; Sora wasn't either.

 _Minor disturbance? Too much to hope for a rescue squad to come sliding down on bungee cables?_

If it _was_ some sort of rescue team come to get him out of here, it could well make sense that they'd be paranoid about keeping the Coliseum locked up. After all, it wasn't supposed to exist anymore, was it?

"Never fear," the Captain continued, raising his voice, to either be heard over the crowd or to shut the crowd up, "We shall commence with the games. Many of you have traveled long and hard to be here today... It wouldn't do for you to see so little."

There were mixed cheers and jeers in the stands, some in agreement and some in dissent, but Sora didn't have the time to process all that, as he felt a familiar hiss at his back, and a burning pain ripped up his leg.

He half side-stepped, half fell to the ground ahead of him, whirling around to see Fuu standing behind him, her scimitar held out, red and wet with his own blood.

"Keep your head in the game," she said plainly, her face as impassive as if she were describing how cloudy it was outside. She ran one finger along the flat of her blade, so it came off red and tacky with blood.

Sora might have mustered up some snappy one-liner in retort, but he didn't quite have the energy to muster one up. His right shin was burning where Fuu had cut it and, though Sora couldn't see the cut himself, the blood that came off on his hand when he felt it was enough to testify that it was worse than the scrape the hellhounds had given him.

"Nice try, though," Fuu continued, moving so she was standing just over Sora who, panting heavily, had sunk to his knees in the dust.

"N-not fair," Sora managed through broken breaths.

"Right," Fuu lifted the scimitar so its curved edge was just inches from Sora's throat, "Nothing is."

At which point, she was pounced on by a particularly angry canine from stage left. Sora reared back on the palms of his hands, staring with wide-eyed shock, terror and (fine, he'd have to admit it) a hint of relief as his new biggest fan, Hellhound #4, pinned a struggling and screaming Fuu to the ground, slobbering at the mouth.

 _That's not right_ , he told himself, _He's gonna_ eat _her!_

A different voice added, _Yeah, well, he was gonna eat_ you _not long ago. Come_ on _. You knew this would end with_ someone _dying. It's not you. Sweet, right?_

But before Sora could carry on this moral debate much longer, there was _another_ ear-splitting noise from somewhere above the arena, as a huge chunk of the north wall was blown apart, huge chunks of granite falling into the arena.

Sora didn't have time to think as he turned his face away from the onslaught, feeling a shower of dust and rubble (the sandier kind, though, fortunately) pelt him from above. He supposed it was fortunate that there weren't any benches on that wall of the arena.

After all, not _all_ of these people could be bloodthirsty psychos, right? And, more practically, Sora didn't much relish the idea of being pelted with people pieces.

He crawled across the ground for a few inches, coughing the dust out of his lungs and trying not to think of Coach's horror stories about how easy it was for even the smallest of open wounds to get infected after exposure to the littlest bit of game-dirt. Sora didn't want to know how those rules applied to sword wounds.

His breath ragged, and his vision unsteady, Sora reached for a nearby chunk of rubble to steady himself against. It was about two feet high and half as wide. There were big letters etched into the stone...' _PUG_ '. Part of the sign beneath the Captain's box.

Using the stone for purchase, Sora struggled to his feet, noticing a dark, rusty sliver of metal in the dust as he did so. Rusty, yes, but still shining a new, fresh red in some places.

His hand shaking, partly from fatigue, partly from adrenaline and partly (or maybe mostly) from blood loss, Sora wrapped his fingers aground the hilt of the scimitar, looking up, through the still hazy dust cloud raised by the impromptu cave-in, to see what lay beyond.

For the first time, Sora was glad he'd skimped out on eating since partaking in Mr. Smee's home cooking. His stomach was twisting enough without the aid of food to chuck up.

She was lying in a puddle...no, a _pool_ of blood, her own body a still, twisted, broken shape in the middle. The dust cloud made it hard to see clearly, but Sora could still make out what exactly his Hellhound Protector had done to Fuu, to her chest, to her arms...to her _face_.

 _Game's over_ , he thought morosely, maniacally, madly, _someone's dead. It can end now._

He leaned against the stone, retching, cold sweat beading on his brow, on his palms, the scimitar a useless weight in his hands.

And then a voice, oily and self-assured, with a new touch of anger in it, "Deftly done, hero. A victory worthy of Hercules."

Before Sora could react, he felt the cold curve of the hook against his jugular, the arm it was attached to wrapped around his throat like a vice. He could smell the Captain, his overpowering cologne, just a hair's breadth from him. Out of the corner of his eye, Sora could make out that sallow, hawkish face, those mottled teeth, the greasy locks of hair, now a wild mess in a barely-done ponytail. There were tears in his livery coat, and scrapes and scratches on his face. It was clear he'd slid down the rubble from the exploded Captain's box, rather than fallen.

A pity. The fall might actually have killed him.

"Let..." Sora panted, the words coming up with difficulty, "Let me go..."

"In due course. Hand over the sword."

Sora might have laughed if he wasn't so tired, so hurt, so terrified, "You...you must think I'm really stupid."

"This is not a _game_ , boy!" the Captain hissed, a manic desperation in his voice, "Can't you see we're under attack?"

"Funny..." weird black clouds were crossing Sora's line of sight, mixing with the dust in the air; surrounded noises were starting to echo and distort, "...I thought _everything_ was a game?"

"You impertinent..."

Sora lifted the scimitar, intending to bring it around him in a swooping arc as he turned, like some swashbuckling action hero, but his body had other plans. Tired and dizzy as he was, Sora had barely leveled the blade at the Captain before he wrenched it out of his hands, swatting Sora away with the flat end of his hook.

 _And here we go again_ , Sora found himself thinking, as he looked up at the Captain staring down at him, haughty and proud, but now with the point of his blade aimed at his navel.

"I could kill you right now," the Captain snarled down at him, "Slice you open from end to end."

 _Mind games. It's all nothing but mind games, trying to get into my head, like he knows more than me, like he has me in the palm of his hand. Well, he can think that. I'm not crying for him ever again._

"Then why don't you?" he coughed out.

"Because you're dying anyway." he shrugged lazily, "Why expend the effort?"

Sora looked up at the Captain, at the vague snatches of movement behind him, shadows or spirits or whatever flitting back and forth, real and unreal. The whole world seemed to be tipping one way and another, like a ship at sea.

"You're a coward," Sora panted through gritted teeth, "You love watching people suffer, but you can't...you can't do anything besides talk."

A terrible expression passed over the Captain's face, and he loomed closer over Sora, lifting the scimitar again.

"Guard your tongue, boy." he hissed, "Remember the difference between cleverness and cunning."

"Yeah..." Sora managed, "I...I've got that down."

At which point, Sora grabbed onto the _PUG_ stone behind him and mustered up all the energy he had to scramble behind it, just as the Captain was shoved to the ground just in front of it by one of the very shadows Sora had glimpsed behind him before.

Thankfully, this one was _not_ a hallucination.

"What..." the Captain spat blood from a newly split lip, lurching to his feet, the scimitar held unevenly in both his hands, " _You?_ "

"Ahoy, Captain." Detective Squall Leonhart looked almost nothing at all like the stoic, humorless cop Sora had first encountered at the DPD, but he was definitely really here, dressed like an overgrown high school delinquent and leveling what seemed to be an authentic Medieval broadsword at the Captain, as if he'd been fighting armored knights his whole life.

"Didn't you say we'd be seeing each other again?" he cocked an eyebrow. From the look of him, dusty and scraped up as he was, he must have come from the other side of the collapsing wall.

He must have seen Sora ogling him, though he didn't actually move his attention from the Captain, "Get out of here, Sora."

Sora's first instinct was surprise that the detective actually remembered his name, but he figured there was probably an easy enough explanation for that, "Yeah, sure, great... _how_?"

"Up there," Leonhart snapped, indicating the cascade of rubble leading up to the crater that had once been the Captain's box, "There's an eleva..."

The Captain raised his scimitar, which Leonhart moved to parry, "Go! I'll catch up with you."

Sora didn't much like the idea of it, but he figured Squall wasn't much inclined to argue, embroiled in a full-out sword fight with the hook-handed egomaniac as he was.

The whole arena had descended into chaos while Sora had been bleeding out on the ground. Hellhounds in various stages of injury were running, jumping, leaping to and fro, howling miserably. Sora saw no sign of Hellhound #4, but he was admittedly distracted by the bleeding wound in his leg.

Chunks of the north wall, ranging from little pebbles to pillars tall enough for Sora to duck behind, littered the arena.

 _What the hell_ did _this?_

He could only assume this had something to do with Leonhart's rescue attempt...if that's really what it was. But still...Sora didn't know all too much about the town legislature, but he didn't think the DPD was allowed to use military-grade explosives in the line of duty.

The blood trickling down his leg made a twisting line in the dirt behind him. Sora became all too aware of it as he came to rest against the far east wall of the arena, looking back at the trail, stark scarlet against the gray and brown of everything else.

"Lot..." he panted unevenly, "Lot of blood..."

He looked up at the wall above him. Maybe eight feet, nine, possibly ten. Perfectly smooth. Whoever had designed this place clearly didn't want contestants taking the easy way out.

Sora tried standing again and found he couldn't. Groaning in dismay, he slumped against the wall, shutting his eyes against the pain. Old pain in his side, new pain in his leg and, all through his body, a sweeping, crushing fatigue. His senses seemed to be dulling, vision fading and noises blending together into some homogenous mess in his head.

He had to get up...he _had_ to, he couldn't just stay here, emptying out like a leaky bucket. And yet, the very thought of trying to stand put such an impossible strain on Sora so as to feel completely impossible.

There was a shift in the noise around him, a change in the atmosphere that, even in his disoriented state, Sora could notice. At first, he thought some sort of electrical outlet had burst in the ruins of the Captain's box. He could make out a bead of bright, silvery light, and hear a monstrous grumbling, like an old generator or a motor. New screams came up from the stands, and Sora thought he heard a swear from closer by...Leonhart's voice, maybe.

 _Great. Everyone's gonna die, and you're the only one that's gonna have to sit and take it._

The idea wasn't all too appealing. Sora grabbed onto a notch in the wall and tried forcing himself up again, with little luck. He looked back at the ruins of the Captain's box, but there was no more light. Yet, still, the noise persisted: a continuing, resonating rumble, so loud and constant that it may as well have been coming from the walls of the Coliseum itself.

Sora turned his head and, with a shock, saw the light, now a little more in focus, moving like a blur around the rim of the lower wall, just beneath the stands and just above the arena.

 _Not just a light,_ Sora realized with a start, _A headlamp. It's a motorcycle._

A motorcycle, precariously balanced on the edge of the wall, moving with reckless abandon, veering one way than another.

Sora recognized what was going on some time before he noticed the flash of improbably silver hair trailing behind him.

"Oh, no _way_..." Though he wasn't sure whether he was saying that aloud or not.

The bike came to a halt just above him, and there he was, windswept and grungy and looking as impassive and unfeeling as ever, those feline eyes of his staring down at Sora as if they were just encountering each other on an afternoon stroll.

"Sora!" he cried, "Christ, are you hurt?"

"...Go _away_ ," Sora muttered, despondent, half-convinced this was just another hallucination.

"Sounds like a good idea." Riku nodded, "Not without you."

Sora hadn't been expecting that. Pressing his wounded side against the wall, he looked up at Riku with as venomous a look as he could manage, "If...if this is some way of...of _making up_ to me or something..."

"Maybe it is," said Riku simply, "The way I see it, you don't really have a lot of options. Come on. You're not staying here."

He stretched out his hand, reaching down for Sora to grab on.

Sora glared at Riku's hand, looking up at him, his eyes narrowed, "You...you _didn't_ come all the way here to _save_ me."

"What if I did?" There was an urgency in Riku's voice, a sort of tinged desperation, "Look, I didn't go through all this just to be turned down out of principle. You can kick my ass later, if you want, but right now we've gotta go."

Sora looked around him, at the confused pack of hellhounds, at Squall and the Captain battling it out, at the various men in black vaulted over the sides of the stands, drawing guns from their belts. Those were new. Styx and Stones guys, probably, out to contain the situation the best they could.

So Sora swallowed his pride, and took Riku's hand.

"Great," Riku heaved him up with a little effort, made no less uneasy as Sora saw just how _much_ blood he'd lost, "Remember how to do this?"

"V-vividly," and he wrapped his arms around Riku's waist, finding that, faint as he was, it wasn't at all bad to have something to prop himself up again, "Step on it."

"Not how it works," Riku replied simply, gunning the engine and starting down the rest of the wall, zooming indiscriminately toward a low archway, with a sign above labeled 'authorized personnel only'.

"Where are we going, exactly?" Sora asked, feeling his own voice catching on his lips.

"I dunno," Riku replied simply, "Out."

They hit the tunnel, nothing around them but darkness and not a sound to be heard but the rumbling of Riku's bike underneath them and the baying of the hellhounds in the distance, growing fainter and fainter, until finally they too were silenced.

* * *

 **A/N:** Again, really, thank you guys all so much for sticking with me through this pretty hefty update gap. It's a pleasure writing this story, and it gladdens me that so many of you are reading it. As always, I appreciate any feedback. This chapter was a doozy in a lot of places.

I can't quite guarantee Chapter 13 for next Friday, but I've already gotten in drafted out and in progress, so it will be done in due course. I may have to stray from giving set-in-stone update dates for the near future, though, at least until I've wrapped up my current semester.

Thanks, and I hope to be with you again soon.


	13. Forces of Nature

Chapter 13, Forces of Nature

 **A/N:** An explanation would appear to be in order, regrettably I don't have a very good one.

I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies for being in absentia for as long as I have (over a year...yikes). Life got in the way, along with stressers great and small. One of my biggest regrets was falling behind on Radiant Creatures.

I started on writing new chapters around October or November, and I've got a few lined up, along with a steady outline for the rest of the story. I can't promise strict once-a-week updates anymore, but I will definitely be more consistent. And hopefully the quality of the chapters are up to par with what you expect...or, heck, maybe better.

This chapter may not look like it (five scenes instead of four...again), but I've been trying to shorten chapter length while still containing enough plot and character progression to make the story work. You guys, as ever, are the judge of how well that works.

Also, not entirely related, but still kind of because well, look where we are, but KH3. Amirite? I don't think I need to tell you guys how I geeked out seeing Riku dressed like a grunge musician circa 1993.

Ahem.

We pick up where we left off... Sora and Riku's daring escape from the Coliseum, Axel's bittersweet parting from Larxene, and the continuing adventure of Celeste's loneliness.

* * *

Axel was feeling pretty proud of himself, all things considered. Sure, he was bedraggled, wild-eyed and wanted by the police, but he was _also_ pretty damned good at playing the sneak.

Not that he wasn't practiced at getting the jump on friends and enemies alike, but the thrill of being _persona non grata_ had upped the ante somewhat. Axel had to admit, he was impressed with himself.

 _Not that that's hard, or anything, but, hey, at least you're honest._

There didn't seem to be a lot of cops around town, but there were enough for Axel to have good enough reason to be wary. Luckily, he'd grown up on these streets. These twisting cobblestone lanes, these narrow crooked alleys and worn stone staircases had been his playground, his battlefield, his world.

It was weird traversing all of it again, taking all the old shortcuts, using all the old hiding spots. More than anything, it only reminded Axel had long it had been since he'd called this place home, and of how different, really different, those two parts of his life were.

So, all in all, it maybe took him about an hour or so to very sneakily make his way to the waterfront, his jacket collar turned up to hide his face, and his hair tied up in a hastily-made librarian's bun, the way Saix had so often done back in the day, to keep his hair out of his eyes on the road.

He spotted his old second-hand bike, still propped up against the ivy-smothered lamppost at the Dugout entrance.

 _Not like anybody was ever gonna steal it_ , he mused, with another pang at the recollection of his _real_ bike, still in the shop back at Destiny.

"Look sharp, you old monster," Axel greeted the bike (he had yet to give it a name, he realized...the last few days really _had_ been tough on him), "We're gonna blow this... _fuckajesus_!"

He stumbled back a step or two, startled by the sudden swell of tinny organ music from behind the metal grille door of the Dugout. The tune was vaguely familiar, but Axel couldn't place it. Like something you would probably hear in and out every day, in the background, but never pay attention to.

As Axel attempted to catch his breath, the obnoxious music was accompanied by an obnoxious voice, loud, echoey and very full of himself, from the sound of it, ' _Though the world around us changes every day, the one constant we have remains within us. Through all life's sorrows, and through all its joys, we still have our Hearts and Souls..._ '

The music rose to a peak crescendo as Axel tentatively moved closer to the door, peering through the lattice into the Dugout.

He guessed what he would he see before seeing it, but that didn't make the actual sight of it any less surreal. Demyx was sprawled out on the lumpy sofa, bare feet propped up on one of the arms, watching the little T.V in the corner with a rapt fascination. He'd taken the shark tooth around his neck between his own lips, pinning it in the corner of his mouth like a particularly hardcore toothpick, though that was really the only hardcore thing about the image.

The image on the T.V screen was grainy and a little off-color (still pretty good, though, considering its origins in the dumpster behind a waterfront seafood shack), but Axel could just make out some guy with a dead marsupial for a hairpiece hammering loudly on someone's door.

" _Come on, Hayden, are you really gonna keep up this charade? We both know you're not so foolish!_ "

A quick cut to some doe-eyed virgin type with a chestnut topiary where most people have hair. She leaned against the other side of the door, pressing her knuckles to her mouth in a state of obvious unease.

" _Go away, David! I don't want you here._ "

" _Is that how you feel?_ " the organ music had reached Easter Sunday levels, while Dem hunched forward, shaking with some pent up anticipation that Axel would deem creepy if he didn't look like such a goober doing it.

" _Or are those just Haley's words on your lips?_ "

Hayden turned, pressing her back against the door, eyes turned toward heaven, as if silent demanding recourse from the cruel god of this feather hair universe, as the show faded to commercial.

" _Hearts and Souls is brought to you by Honest Uncle's Creamery. So salty, yet so..._ "

"Look, man, if you're gonna backseat watch, at least stop blocking the door," Demyx turned to face him, grinning one of his trademark lazy grins, letting the shark tooth fall from his lips with casual abandon.

"You knew I was here?"

"You cast a _bitch_ of a shadow," Demyx indicated the long, slender outline of Axel's body across the floor of the Dugout, "And, 'sides, I'd know that perfume anywhere."

"Since when do I wear perfume?"

"You don't, but sis does."

Axel lifted one arm to his nose, took a tentative sniff, just enough to catch a faint, tangy scent, the faint whiff of it enough to bring to mind memories of a turquoise scarf, and a beret tilted at a jaunty angle atop blond tresses.

"Ooh, almost forgot!" Demyx rummaged behind a loose sofa cushion, retrieving a single, thin gold hoop, "Forgot her earring."

He tossed it to Axel who, despite every urge to the contrary, let it clatter to the floor by his feet.

"You're gonna have to give it to her. I'm checking out."

The grin of Demyx's face melted at once, "Already? Just like _that_?"

"Well, it's not like I was planning to move in, Rainman..."

"Well, yeah, but I figured you'd at least try staying together for the kids," Demyx pouted tremendously, loose, thin strands of his flaxen hair hanging around his face, making him look even more of a wet puppy than he already did.

"I'll send you a check every Christmas, sonny, don't you worry."

"Dick."

"And a little something for Dickface too, of course."

But Demyx wasn't relenting. Arms crossed in an expression of utmost defiance, he leaned forward, "Ax, you can't just _leave_ , not now..."

"What, you'll miss me that much?"

"It's not _me_ , I'm talking about."

Axel sighed, feeling pinned in place. He moved to sit on the couch, paused for a fleeting passionate memory, then thought better of it, and sat down on the floor, leaning against it, the better to be on Demyx's eye level.

"Larxene's getting on pretty damn well without me, Dem."

"That's what she says, sure, but come on, we both know her. Ax, if you even _knew_ what she's got to deal with..."

"Eh, I think I've got a pretty good idea. Argyle socks and aloe itch cream, what more does a gal need?"

"Wait, he's _back_?" Demyx's eyes bugged out of his head, "You met him?"

"Well, not face to face, but..."

"You know what I'm talking about, then! Axel, he _sucks_."

"You see me arguing?" Axel asked, "I get it, he's some yuppie douche that I never woulda imagined Larxene going for in a million years. But I think I forfeit my opinion on all that when I cut loose and ditched on her."

"That what happened?" the way Demyx asked the question Axel couldn't be sure if he was honestly curious, being sarcastic, or just challenging him again.

Axel wasn't really thrilled about responding in any of the three ways though, so he didn't.

"Is he really...that bad?" Axel asked, "I mean, they seem pretty happy."

"Well, yeah, _seem_. But you don't know what he's done to her, man..."

He felt one hand tighten around his knee, cocking an eyebrow as he did so, "What, you mean...like he's hurt her, or something?"

"Not like _that_..." Demyx stopped himself, face scrunched up in an expression of visible effort, as if it hurt just to attempt to put words to it.

"...he's changed her, Ax. She's not the way she was, don't tell me you didn't notice."

Axel was quiet for a bit, remembering last night, this very spot by the couch before they'd all but collapsed on it in a tangle of limbs, of hair, his lips on hers and her hands on him, feeling as if it had been years and days between then and now, all at once.

The way she smiled when she'd shown him that old picture of the Dugout, how she'd taken his bike up and down the streets of Twilight like an old pro, beret on her head, laughing into the wind.

"That's...that's just growing up, Dem." but Axel felt the hollowness of the words even as he said them.

Demyx shook his head, "If growing up means you take everything special about yourself, lock it up and throw away the key, then I don't ever wanna do it. You grew up, didn't you?"

"Actually," he couldn't keep back a laugh, "That's a matter of some debate."

"What, because you didn't just turn into some brain dead office drone over night?" he leaned against the well-worn leather of his sitar case, "Changing yourself just so other people take you seriously...that's just some big game of pretend, and last I checked, that's kid stuff."

Axel was tempted to point out that acting like the hottest scene band in town could be considered pretend, but remembered the same could be said about putting on a leather jacket and motorbiking in the same of fraternal anarchy, so he shut up.

Demyx continued, softly, voice tinged with something weirdly like guilt, "Things were...were pretty rough, Ax. After you and Saix..." he shrugged.

Axel was quiet to that.

"...she was so upset, man. It...it kinda scared me, really. And, yeah, I know, I scare easily, but..." he shook his head, "I'd never seen her like that before, yanno? All my life, she was the one who took care of everything, made sure everything was okay."

"The Den Mother we never asked for," Axel said faintly, smiling despite himself.

Demyx smiled back, "I didn't know what to do. I wanted to help her, I wanted to say something, but...but I dunno, man, I..."

He was fidgeting with something between his fingers, Axel noticed now. The pick, 'CP', same one he'd discovered last night.

"I messed up," he said at last, "Freaked her out."

"Trying to get her attention?"

"I wish I was that good," he sighed, "But, hey, it got her mind off you anyway."

"Mission accomplished, then."

"Nah. She...she got it in her head that she needed to do _more_ , you know? Keep me off the street, I guess. Get us an honest life." he sighed, spreading his arms wide as if in some depressed abandon, "And along comes Looza."

Axel nodded slowly, "So...she got with this guy because..."

"Because of me," Axel found himself thinking that Demyx's face should never look the way it did just then, so broken, so sad, so defeated, "she put her whole life on hold, put _everything_ about herself away, to keep me from screwing up again."

His shoulders slumped, his lower lip trembling. It might've looked silly, if it weren't for how _small_ Demyx suddenly looked. Small, shrunken, sad...really just the little mop haired middle schooler that had used to tag along with them, driving them all nuts with his endless strumming, his tuneless singing, his never failing drive to be included, to be part of the gang.

"Demyx..." Axel began, struggling for words.

"What? It's not my fault? I shouldn't beat myself up about it?"

"I could tell you all that, but c'mon I know you. You'd never believe me." he paused, "And where do I have room to talk anyway?" he scoffed, pointing at himself, "You want screw ups, look no farther."

"Yeah, maybe..." Demyx shrugged, "but if anyone ever knew how to screw up with style, it's you."

"You flatter me," but he couldn't keep himself thinking of Larxene, of Demyx, of Marluxia.

He wanted to ask what had happened, what Demyx had done to change Larxene so much. If really one person's actions could make someone change their entire life around. And if it was worth it.

 _Aw, c'mon. You know how it works. Some people can only take so much before some mental reset button kicks into gear and they're suddenly never the same._

"Is...uh...is he really so bad?" he asked at last, in a voice so faint he could barely hear himself.

"Worse than bad, man," Demyx told him, "She thinks I'm just talking, just being some shithead kid, and maybe I am, but...I _know_ there's something about him. It's not the flowers, not the clothes..."

"Not him kicking your band out of the house?"

"Well, that was a honking big red flag, for one thing," he sighed, "But it's deeper than that. I don't know...just, just some feeling I have."

"Poet's bleeding heart, huh?"

"Call it what you want. But I know I'm right, Ax. He's killing her, but she doesn't want to see it. And no matter how many times I try to tell her, she'll never believe me..."

"Because she thinks she's saving you," Axel finished for him, "Dem, you know she doesn't need saving. She'd kick the ass of anyone who said otherwise."

"You think I don't that? Look, she knew when I hit rock bottom, and I didn't want to believe it, but she knew, and I kicked and screamed and told her to screw off..."

"She let you live after that?"

"She's full of surprises." he flashed a smile, "Point is, she pulled me up again, whether I liked it or not. I started playing again, met Hayner..." there was a soft fondness in his eyes, and Axel again thought of last night at the steps, the way Hayner had flung his arm around Demyx's shoulder, the certainty with which Larxene spoke of his feelings for her brother.

"Got my band together, got my _life_ back. Maybe I'm not all the way grown up, but I _feel_ better. Smarter, maybe. Stronger. She did that for me. Now she's not acting herself and..." he shrugged, "well, can you blame me if I want to return the favor?"

Axel sighed, "If only she'd listen to you."

"Right? I figure no matter what happens between her and me, I'll always be some snotnose 12 year old."

"What, you're not 12?"

Demyx thudded him on the shoulder and Axel couldn't help but laugh with him, wrapping his arm, around his back.

"So, basically..."

" _We now return to Hearts and Souls._ "

"Oh, shit!" and, like a switch, Dem was fixed on the TV again, "Hold that thought, 'kay?"

"Actually, I've been meaning to ask what the deal with this show is..."

But Demyx glared at him with such severity that Axel didn't doubt he'd attack him with the sitar pick if he wanted, so Axel shut up. For now.

But Demyx still spoke, even as Hayden returned to the screen, backed up against the door and choking back her gratutious tears.

"Well, my return to polite society wasn't just getting my band together. One thing you never notice slogging through school all your life, but all the _good_ TV is on during the day."

"Praise Jeebus for truancy."

"You said it, now shut up," Demyx smiled beningly at the TV, "This is gonna be _sick_. Y'see, David and Hayden broke up, like, last year, when he found out she was going around with his brother Haley."

" _Haley?_ "

"Look, we can't all be named Axel. Anyway, Haley and Hayden are still seeing each other, but David promised he'd kill Haley if he ever saw him with her."

"Where does he get off?"

" _Right?_ " Demyx shrugged, beaming, "Anyway, Hayden and Haley got back together again, and now David is here with the divorce papers..."

"Took him long enough."

"And Haley's inside, hiding _under the bed._ "

"What an idiot." Axel smirked, "Can I make a guess?"

"What, about whether Hayden's pregnant, because Olette and I have this bet..."

"You want me to tell Larxene everything you just told me." he looked at Demyx, "Because she won't listen to you, but she can't help but listen to me?"

He expected Dem to try and wriggle his way out of that, spin it a different way, something, but instead he got a look of childish abashment, "Uh...well...will you?"

"What can I say, Rainman, you've got a way with words," Axel shook him lightly by the shoulder, "'Sides, I think there's something about sticking up for one another in the code."

"The Earthshakers."

"Nah," Axel shook his head, "well, yeah, but I meant screw ups. We gotta stick together, don't we?"

And Demyx threw his arms around him, just as David kicked down Hayden's door, like a reasonable gentleman.

Axel felt the wind knocked out of him by the embrace, the soft warmth of Dem's thin arms around him, the faint, but very present, smell of Mexican food on his breath.

"You...are... _awesome_."

"But look, I'm not making any guarantees. She and Luxia seem pretty serious."

"Yeah, well, that couch was pretty serious too," Demyx indicated the aforementioned furniture, "But _someone_ nearly split it in half recently. Maybe two someones."

"Dem...your sister and me are..." he sighed, "that's not gonna happen again, you know that right?"

"Yeah, of course I do, I'm not some kid." Demyx told him, his face aglow with the most kiddy expression Axel knew to describe, "But someone's gotta point out that Looza's bad news."

"And what better voice of reason than me?" prompted Axel, at the same time reflecting on the pretty irony of this latest quest.

 _After all this time, maybe it's only right that you return the favor_.

* * *

After three different impossible inclines, four unexpected downhill ramps, and two hairpin turns, Riku began to realize a few things about their predicament.

First, that in his attempt to get as far away as possible from any angry pursuers, they'd gotten hopelessly lost in _another_ network of disused tunnels with no evident exit. Second, that Betty's headlamp was already beginning to dim, and there wasn't much else to use for light around here for any direction. Third, Sora was probably about to die.

"W-why are we stopping?" Sora's voice was languid and exhausted, an irritating tickle against Riku's ear as he brought Betty to a gentle stop at a junction in the low-ceilinged warren they'd been driving down for the last half hour or so.

"Because if you don't get patched up soon," Riku explained, getting up onto the uneven gravel of the ground, "You'll empty out like a water bottle with a hole in it."

He bent down to look at Sora's hurt leg, and felt an unpleasant lurch in his stomach. The skin was a mottled gray, like those little minnows fishermen used as bait to attract the bigger catches. Then again, Riku couldn't very well make out a lot of skin, given Sora's leg was covered in blood, parts drying and parts freshly bled, like some grotesque plaster cast.

"Shit," Riku swore, his voice hollow.

"Great bedside manner," Sora's eyes were half closed, and he was already dangerously close to conking his head on the now vacant handlebars.

"Oh, no you don't," Riku grabbed him by the shoulder just before he could _actually_ hit his head, "Come on. I didn't put myself through all this just so you could die on me on the way out."

"Oh, yeah...sorry to be such a burden to you," Sora winced as Riku set him down on the ground, "If I had it another way, I'd have tried _really_ hard not to get kidnapped by your dick biker friend."

"I told you," said Riku automatically, "Seifer's not my friend."

"Oh, yeah...sorry, that makes a _world_..." he attempted a laugh, but the resulting effect was a pained groan, his body seizing up on the floor, "...of difference."

"Look, could you...could you just _hold still_?" Riku besought him, "Please?"

"If you come any closer to that thing, I swear to God, I'm gonna..."

"You're gonna?" prompted Riku.

Sora took another shaky breath, apparently giving up, "I've had more than enough bargain bin doctors, thanks."

Sora had given Riku a more or less coherent account of the stitches he'd been given where he'd been shot, but hadn't offered to show Riku the hatchet job. Riku didn't think he wanted to see them, though, even as a learning aid.

Bad enough to know Sora had almost died, not once but a few times, all because Seifer had panicked at the last minute.

Maybe Sora was right not to trust him too much.

 _Maybe? Yeah, sure, 'maybe', if you wanna make yourself feel better about it._

"Well I'd call an ambulance, but we don't exactly have ideal traffic conditions down here,"As if to demonstrate, he turned Sora so his head was propped up against the left wall of the tunnel, with Riku crouched at his feet, his own back leaning against the right wall.

"Ha." Sora was stone-faced.

"Okay...so we've gotta stop the bleeding."

"Great idea. Got a crocheting kit?"

"Could you _stop that_?" Riku demanded, "I'm trying to think."

"Yeah, so am I. Half of me thinks it would be _really_ sweet to just close my eyes and go to sleep, but I've seen enough movies to know that's a really, _really_ bad idea."

"Wait!" cried Riku straightened up.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"I've thought of something."

"Lay it on me."

Riku reached into his pocket, retrieving his switchblade, which he clicked open.

Sora reeled back against the wall, almost braining himself for the second time this afternoon, "Whoa, whoa, what the hell?"

"Could you _relax_?" Riku revved Betty's engine, allowing the faint but still operational headlamp to shine onto them, "We just need a little light..."

"Oh, yeah, sure, that's _all_ you need, that's the only problem here, it's too dark to see the panic in my eyes as you carve your name into my..."

"Jesus," Riku sighed, setting the knife down so he could shrug his dirty black hoodie off over his head, "Look, Sora, can you just hold still? You're making me nervous."

" _Nervous?_ You wanna saw off my leg and _you're_ nervous?"

"And you're overreacting."

Sora probably would've kicked him in the soft spot, had he the energy for it, " _Overreacting_? What, am I underestimating the Earthshakers' surgical know-how?"

"Yeah, you are," he tried not to laugh, "The overreacting part. I don't know jack about surgery. But, as it turns out," he began carving strips of fabric off his hoodie with his knife; decent length strips of thick black cotton, falling pellmell into his lap, "I don't need to."

Sora was still looking at him as if he'd grown a third head. Riku sighed, "You don't really think I could play sawbones with _this_ thing, do you?" he waved the little blade of the knife back and forth as if to prove his point.

"No!" Sora said at once, "I mean... _I_ know that. I didn't know if...you know, you did. How am I supposed to know how you think? It could've seemed like your idea of..." he shuddered, shutting his eyes tightly against another spasm of pain, "...f-first aid."

"Fair enough," Riku allowed, selecting one of the lengthier strips of fabric from the pile he'd made, "I don't think I've got the stomach to amputate anything, so you better hope this works."

"Oh, I'm hoping." He didn't sound all that enthusiastic about it, though.

Riku sighed, "We're gonna need to trust each other if we want to get out of this."

"Trust?" Sora said the word like it was a particularly obnoxious joke.

Riku felt his face redden, "Point taken. What about... _tolerate_?"

Sora didn't say anything to that, but he held still as best he could as Riku fashioned a makeshift tourniquet around the cuts on his leg.

"There..." Riku judged as he tied the last knot of three, looking at his crude but...hopefully...serviceable handiwork, "That'll staunch the bleeding, at least."

Sora ran his hand along the fabric, "You've done this before?"

"Once or twice. Earthshakers get in a lot of fights. Swords are a bit old school for us, though." Riku got to his feet, taking Sora's hand in his, "Can you stand?"

"Well, let me... _whoa_!"

Riku didn't wait for an actual reply before tugging Sora to his feet, watching him sway precariously for a moment, though he did regain something like balance pretty quickly.

"You call that 'trust'?" Sora scowled, wincing.

"Tolerance." Riku shrugged, "If you couldn't stand, I would've kept you from hitting the floor again, if that means anything."

"Really reassuring. Thanks." He hesitated, moving gingerly from one foot to another.

"Don't mention it," Riku gathered the remains of his hoodie, gradually growing aware of how cold it was down here, in just his grungy teeshirt.

"Now, let's cut..."

He got himself back behind the handlebars and, no sooner had he touched the seat did Betty give a mournful shudder, produce a noise sort of like an angry goat, and quickly grow still and silent, the headlamp fading to darkness.

"Aw, shit." Riku groaned, attempting to rev the engine back up, "No, no, _no_...dammit!"

He brought an angry hand down upon the handlebars, feeling a shock of pain shoot up his arm.

"What happened?" asked Sora, close by, "Out of gas?"

"Out of _something_." Riku got back to his feet and moved around to Betty's side, crouching down to open the gas tank.

Before he knew what he was doing, Sora was suddenly alongside him, "Could there be something stuck inside?"

Riku might have scoffed at the suggestion under normal circumstances, but a sudden recollection of a dead bird in an exhaust pipe gave him pause.

"Could be."

"Maybe we can...I dunno, maybe get a stick or something and jimmy it around in there?"

"Sure. Got a stick?"

Sora sighed, "Well, maybe..."

"There's no 'maybe'," Riku said with finality, slamming the tank shut as he rose back up, "She's not going anywhere."

It hurt to say it, but Riku could see no other way out. Like it as not, Betty was just out of gas, as Sora had first suggested. Not a big deal under normal circumstances, but stuck down here, a couple of dozen feet below ground and probably a few hundred feet above the nearest fuel source, there weren't a lot of options.

"You...you sure?" Sora asked, a sort of softer undertone to his voice, "I mean, maybe there's..."

"Nah. We've gotta keep moving."

"But maybe..."

"Forget it," Riku said shortly, popping open the glovebox so he could retrieve whatever remained of Axel's parting gift to him.

He already had the knife and his lighter in his pockets. Someone...Seifer, probably...had taken the bottle of Coke. That left the two bags. One of chips and the other of Ax's Good Vibrations.

"Help yourself," Riku heard himself say, as he tossing the chips over to Sora, who caught it pretty neatly, all things considered.

"Um...thanks," Sora was looking past Riku, maybe aware that there was _another_ bag in the box.

Without quite thinking what he was doing, Riku picked it up and shoved it into his pocket. Bad enough leaving Betty behind but, stupid as the bag of condoms was, it was all he had of Axel.

Sora obviously had questions, but Riku cut them short, "Come on. We'd better move."

Sora nodded, but he didn't move, instead looking down at the floor, where one or two of the strips from Riku's hoodie were still lying.

He collected the two, tied them into a knot at the middle and, a pensive look on his face, tied the lengthier stretch of fabric to Betty's right handlebar on one end, festooning the other to a protruding stone in the opposite wall

"What're you doing?" asked Riku.

"Trip wire," Sora nodded to the span of cloth, barely visible in the darkness, stretching from one end of the tunnel to the other, "Like you said, they're gonna figure out which way we went eventually."

"Think they'll fall for that?"

Sora shrugged, "Least we tried, right? 'Sides, for a bunch of evil geniuses, these guys are kinda stupid."

Riku gave a curt nod of agreement, but didn't say anything, not looking up from Betty's darkened headlamp.

A hot, balmy summer day came back to his mind. His hair had been even longer back then, wild and unkempt, always falling into his eyes. Riku didn't think it ever bothered him at the time. But that day...it was such a _hot_ , smothering, suppressive sort of day. He'd been soaked with sweat, his hair sticking to his brow, obstructing his vision.

There was a kerchief in his hand. A bandanna, with bright purple and blue tartan patterns. Mim had hundreds of them in her underwear drawer, she was never going to notice one missing.

And it had been so hot, so miserably hot, that Riku had quite forgotten all about cleaning the dirt of the road out of his bike's exhaust pipe. The sleek gray and black finish on either side of it had been gleaming in the sun, stinging his eyes.

But Riku's bike was Riku's bike, his very own, and he couldn't just let it get dirty on him.

But it was so hot, and Riku felt drained. Not entirely thinking, he remembered lifting the bandanna halfway to his face...

" _Word to the wise, motor oil's a bitch of a gateway drug._ "

He didn't look different back then, not really. Still tall, lanky, trailing an impossibly red mane behind him with every lazy, leisurely step.

Riku had looked down at the oil-sodden rag he'd been about to wipe his face with, and blushed sheepishly, " _Um...I knew that. Thanks._ "

" _Nice hog._ "

Funny, looking back on it, how long it had taken Riku to figure out what Axel meant, " _Oh...yeah, thanks. It's mine._ "

" _Nice!_ " that wolfish grin, blinding in the sun, " _Who'd you steal it from?_ "

" _I didn't_ steal _it from anyone!_ " Riku recalled the wavering, almost childish affront in the tone, tinged with a bit of fear, " _It's mine._ "

" _Oh yeah?_ " he'd pursed his lips, looking from Riku to the bike, as if judging for himself, " _You've got money to burn, then, huh?_ "

" _What's it to you?_ "

And, for the first time, Axel had looked at him eye-to-eye, as if that one phrase was some magic passcode, and he laughed aloud.

" _Not a damn thing._ "

So Riku laughed too, here, in this dingy, sunless cave, years and miles away from then: a short, melancholy, unexpected laugh, rubbing the worn leather grips of Betty's handlebars.

"You okay?"

Riku turned to see Sora, who was looking somewhat out of place, slumped up against the wall as if in some champion effort to keep pressure off his injured side.

Riku nodded absently, "Let's get moving."

He started down the tunnel, Sora limping along besides him. He thought of looking back at Betty, some sort of symbolic 'Farewell, old friend' sort of moment. But it was too dark, and he could barely see in front of him, much less behind.

"Sorry," Sora's voice came out of the darkness, so close to Riku's ear. He'd almost forgotten he wasn't walking alone.

Riku didn't do anything to indicate he'd even heard, but Sora kept talking, "About your bike. You've gotta be pretty torn up about it."

"I've _gotta_?" Riku echoed.

Sora paused, "...aren't you?" Another footstep, a crunch of gravel, "You're a biker, it's your bike...isn't there some kind of...symbolic thing?"

Somehow, that made Riku smile, though Sora probably couldn't see it, "I dunno. Do you guys take your gameball out to dinner whenever you win?"

"First of all, _no_ , taking the gameball is stealing. There's a fine for that, and we'd be put on probation. And...I dunno, I thought you guys had some kinda...biker's code, or something. Like a rule book. Traditions and stuff."

"We've got traditions, yeah."

"Kidnapping and jailbreak count as hazing rituals?" But Riku could tell from Sora's voice that it was meant as a joke, however feebly.

"Nothing that crazy. But we've got hazing."

"So do we," Sora sounded so wistful Riku was half-inclined to believe he was having pain-induced hallucinations, "I remember, when I made the team, the other guys took an old jersey and they," he laughed. It was an uneven, somewhat pained laugh, but genuine.

"...they tied it to the top of the goalposts, and I had to climb up and get it. In the dark. In thirty minutes."

"Or else?" Riku prompted.

"Or else what?"

"What would happen if you couldn't? They can't kick you off the team, can they?"

"What happens?" Sora sighed, "Nothing good, I guess. Don't I ask me. I did it. 17 minutes and thirty seconds."

He laughed again, but...and maybe Riku was just imagining it this time, but this time it seemed a little forced.

"What about you?" Sora asked in a somewhat lighter voice.

"What about me?"

"What did your biker crew make you do when you joined? Please don't tell me all those rumors about ramping off the Overlook at midnight are true."

Riku almost considered telling Sora that they _were_ , if only because he'd believed them too, before he joined.

" _Shooting stars, just falling off the Overlook, right into the lake, like sparks from a campfire. One little purr, sweet as a cat, they shine real bright for a second...then they're gone, swallowed by the darkness...until they rise back up to the surface, like fire on water._ "

"If they were, there wouldn't be any Earthshakers to talk about it," Riku said instead, "You ramp off the Overlook, you're gonna make a pretty stain when you hit the lake."

"That's what I thought," though Sora had the annoyed tone of someone trying to defend their intelligence, "Stupid thing, anyway. If you're _Earth_ shakers, you're initiation isn't gonna be about jumping into the _water_. Duh."

"Duh," Riku agreed, but Sora evidently wasn't satisfied.

"So...what _did_ they make you do?"

"Why do you wanna know so badly?"

"Oh, I dunno..." Sora began with put-upon thoughtfulness, "It's just that you've gotten me kidnapped and now you've decided to rescue me, and I'm just figuring out I don't know a thing about you."

Riku turned to look at Sora, actually stopping in his tracks. Sora must have noticed; soon enough, it was silent in the tunnel, not a footstep to be heard.

"You're right," Riku said at last, with a sigh, "you don't."

There were a few seconds of deep, still quiet. A silence in which the darkness around them seemed almost to be a tangible thing, closing them in, smothering them. An expectant hum seemed to reverberate through the air.

"Well?" Sora's voice seemed to come from all directions, echoed off the walls, off the floor, off the ceiling, "I'm all ears."

The humming continued, like some undercurrent of white noise. Riku felt trapped, accused, pinned in one place, the whole world seeming to be hinging on some explanation it would surely find unsatisfactory...

The humming got louder and, as the ground beneath them began to rumble, it became clear that the humming wasn't just Riku's imagination.

"What..." Sora began, "What's happening? Earthquake?"

" _Earthquake?_ " But Riku was prevented from saying anything more as a hail of dust rained down from the ceiling, a reasonably portion of it raining down into his open mouth.

"Look out!" Riku felt a hand on his arm and, before he could react, found himself being pulled over by the wall as some larger chunks...pebbles, mostly (hopefully) came clattering down from the tunnel ceiling, scattering down the walls on either side.

The rumbling gradually began to fade, petering back out to just a low hum, than a whisper, then nothing. The tunnel was quiet again, with nothing but rapid breaths of two panicked, frenzied boys side-by-side against the wall.

"Close one," Sora said unsteadily, coughing as if to clear his lungs out.

Riku nodded, blinking grit from his eyes, "Y-yeah. Sounded like a bulldozer, or something, right overhead."

"You think if we knock on the ceiling hard enough, they'll hear us?"

Riku gave him a look, and Sora tittered in exasperation, "Yeah, you're a bucket of laughs." There was a brief silence, in which Riku picked more coarse granite from his hair, before Sora spoke again, "Hey!"

"What?"

"There's something back here, on the wall," Sora had turned around at this point, running his fingers tentatively up and down a solid stretch that, on closer inspection, Riku could see was very different from the uneven brick and granite of the rest of the tunnel.

"And here," Sora tapped his finger against a sturdy steel rectangle on the door's right side, "Looks like there used to be a handle, or something. No keyhole."

"Knowing this place, I _really_ don't want to try looking behind any more locked doors," said Riku, "Come on, we should get going."

"But it could be a way out!"

"It _could_ be, yeah," Riku gestured pointedly down the rest of the tunnel ahead of them, "But _that_ definitely is."

"I dunno, it just feels...weird. Look, it's some random door just sitting here."

"Isn't it standing?"

"Shut up. It's a door, just... _here_ , and it's the only door we've seen down here..."

"There's probably a bunch of doors down here. It's a big place."

"You're not even a _little_ curious?" Sora cocked his head to the side, "Come on, I've got a good feeling about this."

Riku sighed, feeling the weight of Sora's eyes on him again...not accusatory, the way they were before, or even _before_ before, back in the tunnel during the storm. It still felt weird, to have Sora being anything other than openly hostile or resentful toward him.

Riku figured he couldn't just let all that go to pot.

"Up there," he said, indicating a pane of grungy glass, stained almost entirely with who knew how many years of dust and grime, "There's a window, or something."

"Ha! _Now_ we're talking..." Sora got up on tiptoes, looking up at the window. Riku resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"C'mon." he braced himself, crouching down with his hands cupped in front of him, "I'll boost you up."

The enthusiasm melted from Sora's face in an instant, "Wait...what?"

"Unless you have enough faith in my first aid talents to risk jumping through on a bad leg..."

Sora looked from the window back to Sora one more time, and then sighed, "Alright."

He stepped gingerly into Riku's outstretched hands (Riku tried not to complain at the sudden realization that Sora's sneakers had _clearly_ been through the wringer the past few days), positioning himself just beneath the window latch.

"Okay," said Riku through gritted teeth, "On three, I'll boost you up."

"Three. Gotcha," Sora bit his lip nervously.

Sensing his anxiety, Riku added, "I'll catch you if you fall," as reassuringly as he could.

"Who said I was gonna fall?" Sora grinned cheekily.

Riku thought of bringing up how this whole fiasco had started in the first place, but thought against it, "Okay, fine. One..." he adjusted his weight, the better to balance Sora in his hands, "...two..."

"Three!" Sora finished, leaping (maybe more like skipping) a few inches into the air, where he grabbed onto the window latch by the fingertips, wrenching it open.

"Ha!" he whooped in delight, his legs kicking somewhat ridiculously back and forth as Riku reeled back, panting in mixed surprise and relief, "Got it!"

"Good," Riku nodded, staggering back to his feet, "Watch out, okay? Seriously, there could be _anything_ back..."

But Sora had already shouldered the window open, and was easing himself, feet first, through the gap, the window promptly slamming shut behind him, with a deafening thump.

"Argh, crap!" Riku heard the muffled exclamation from the other side.

"You okay?"

"Still got all ten fingers, by the looks of it." Riku heard unsteady footfall, "It _really_ stinks in here."

"Beautiful. Can you get out?"

"Yeah, genius. You forgot there's a door?"

Riku sighed, "Can you _get it open_?"

"Er...probably. Stand back." More footsteps.

Riku obliged, suddenly feeling uneasy, "Wait, what are you..."

Without further ado, the door fell outward, swinging unevenly out into the tunnel on its rusted hinges, producing a thick cloud of almost phosphorescent greenish fog and, silhouetted in it, Sora, panting and coughing, but looking quite pleased with himself.

"Huh," he said, "worked the first time. Wasn't expecting that."

"Are you _insane_?" Riku demanded, his eyes watering in the mist.

"It was already a little loose," Sora shrugged, "No big deal." he waved his hand back and forth in front of his face, clearing some of the fading fog out, "What _is_ that? Smells like a locker room."

Riku grimaced at the description, moving tentatively closer to the doorway, "It's gas, isn't it? Like that stuff that comes out of tombs when they open them up after a hundred years or whatever."

He could feel Sora's look of surprise, but he didn't want to bring up his stint as Mr. Thatch's T.A now.

"This place has been locked up for a while," Riku looked uncertainly at Sora, who shrugged, leading the way back inside.

The room was decently sized, from what Riku could tell in the darkness. The weird, stale air suggested it was pretty empty.

"Looks like a bust," Riku declared evenly.

"Not so fast," Sora countered, walking past him to a spot on the wall a little away from the door, "There's, like a switch or something..."

A distinct little click echoed through the room, followed by a harsh buzz as, one by one, fluorescent bulbs flickered to life from their fixtures in the ceiling. One or two of them must have been at the end of their rope, as they burst into sudden showers of glass and sparks, raining on the floor and producing a muffled curse from Sora.

"Whoa," he panted, looking around, "It's like a test kitchen."

"A what?"

"You know, like on T.V? They've got those cooking shows in these big, really fake looking..." he broke off, abashed, "My...Mom watches them sometimes."

"Uh-huh," But Riku could get where Sora was coming from. The walls were all uniform white tiles, chipped and grimy though they were. The room was lined with solid gray counters of thick Formica, with glass-fronted cupboards, some hanging open, all of them apparently empty.

The counters were bare too, and so were the two hefty tables spaced more or less between them. There was a sink wedged between two of the counter units. A deep, square basin with a monstrous faucet. Riku crossed over to it, turning the tap, but he got nothing but a rusty groan.

"Lights work, but no water," he commented, turning to Sora, who was opening and shutting the drawers that lined the counter range.

"There's some stuff in here," Sora held up an instrument that looked sort of like salad tongs, opening and shutting them experimentally, "Maybe the Styx and Stones tried cooking contests when fight club stopped selling tickets."

"Maybe," Riku turned his attention away from a bare patch of the wall, on which there were several frayed copper cables, as if some huge electrical appliance had just been forcibly wrenched away. Inexplicably, he felt goosebumps prickle on the back of his neck.

"We should go, Sora. There's nothing here."

"You think so? Then what do you call _that_?" with a flourish, he pointed over Riku's shoulder with the tongs, indicating yet another industrially-built steel door in the rear of the room. There were words stenciled onto it in white paint, but years of neglect had made them more or less illegible.

"Looks like a freezer,"

" _Looks_ like," Sora repeated, "The crazy guy that held me at hook-point told me to never judge a book by its cover, so I won't."

Riku wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a joke or not, but Sora was already marching his way triumphantly over to the freezer door, which he began struggling with.

Sighing dejectedly, Riku turned his attention to the drawer Sora had been looking through. It was mostly weird looking tools like the tongs, but Riku glimpsed a corner of a yellowed page poking out from beneath a ring of rusty keys.

Deciding to indulge his curiosity, Riku wrested the paper out from the bottom of the drawer. It was discolored from age, with typed letters that had faded so much in some places Riku was forced to squint to make them out. It was torn at the top corner, as though it had been separated from more pages in a packet.

"Could use a little help here!" Sora's voice came to him from across the room.

"One second," Riku replied automatically, holding the page up to the light.

It began mid-sentence, ' _Subject agitated, actively resisting protocol. Increase cortisol intake. May mitigate anger._ "

In the margin, somebody (possibly the typist) had written, in a dark black ink, ' _Negative. Subject stubbornly resists the hormone. May be adapting to protocol! Must monitor._ '

"It's locked!" Sora called, from by the freezer, "But I think I can get it open."

"Huh?" Riku looked up, "Try these," he collected the keyring from the drawer and tossed it over to Sora, who caught it with a look of muted thanks.

"What're you reading?"

"I'm...uh...I'm not sure," Riku replied softly, already absorbed in the next typed section of the notes:

' _June 3_ _rd_ _:_

 _Subject's mood has improved considerably. Undoubtedly attributed to reintroduction of the Girl._ '

A note in the margin, more bold than the last annotation, ' _Miss M and her little gifts! This one might pay off more than she thought._ '

The next typed lines were a bit unsteady...Riku realized his hand was shaking as it held the page. He suddenly felt cold and uneasy.

' _Will keep both together. Morale for Subject. Influence of loved one may mitigate effects of protocol_. _Should prove_...'

"Got it!" Sora's voice was so sudden, so jarring, that Riku dropped the paper to the floor, whirling around, as if forcibly brought back to the world.

Sora had unlocked the freezer door, and was already pulling it open when Riku turned to look at him.

"Well, don't just _stand_ there! Come on, this thing's heavy."

"Yeah," Riku nodded, bending down to crumple up the page and shove it into his pocket "Yeah, sure."

There was something else in the drawer, Riku glimpsed from the corner of his eye. A clear plastic case, previously hidden under the sheet. A cassette tape. Without even thinking, Riku collected that as well, putting it in his pocket alongside the note before going over to the freezer door.

Sora looked out at him, like he could tell something was wrong, but Riku joined him in pulling the door open before Sora could say anything.

There was another hiss as the door eased open, and a few more wisps of greenish gas came wafting out. Both Sora and Riku were prepared for it this time, though, and Sora did little more than gag once.

Riku, however, was too preoccupied to even take in the foulness of the fumes.

 _Miss M...What are the odds?_

It was strange...Riku had spent his entire time in the Underworld knowing that Maleficent and the Styx and Stones had some kind of business, but the sudden hard fact of it staring him in the face was still kind of unbelievable.

"Here we go," Sora sighed with relief, leaning against the newly opened door, "Better be worth it."

" _I_ wasn't the one that wanted to look around in here in the first place," But Riku's voice had a falseness to it that even he could sense.

Whatever Sora had been expecting to find here, Riku knew what _he'd_ found. And it only made everything even harder to understand.

Sora had no response to that, already heading into the freezer. It was a small, square room, with a reasonably high ceiling. The walls and floor were tiled like the room outside it. And, like that room, it was almost entirely empty, but for one significant exception...

"Oh, shit," Sora breathed, stopping in his tracks, "That's not..."

"Blood." Riku bent down to better examine the splotchy dark red stains on the floor, "Looks like it." he lifted his eyes, feeling the gradually widening stains to the far wall, where a circle of cracked, muddy red widened out from beneath a pair of thick, iron chains bolted to the wall.

"This isn't a freezer," Riku said softly, "It's a cell."

"But for who?"

Riku shook his head, staring at the chains, "I think this was some kind of...lab, or something. You know, for experiments."

"Some experiments," Sora sounded sick, turning away from the chains, "Jesus, I hate this place."

"I hear you," but Riku barely heard himself say that, the words he'd read echoing through his head, over and over again.

He pictured Maleficent, huddled up in her silk wraps, sitting by the fire in her big, drafty house, Diablo perched on her shoulder. Somehow, he couldn't picture her in a place so bare, so... _dead_ as this place.

And yet, really, it made a frightening sort of sense despite that.

He considered showing Sora the notes he'd found, maybe playing the cassette as well, but Sora spoke first.

"Hey, look...up there." he nodded toward the ceiling, "Is that a trapdoor?"

Riku followed his gaze. Indeed, there was an iron hatch dead center in the cell's ceiling, with the words 'EMERGENCY VENT' stenciled in peeling red lettering.

"Locked. Of course." Riku indicated the hefty padlock latched to the door's handle.

"Pretty sick," Sora commented, "Locking somebody up here, with the way out _right_ there."

 _Not just somebody. Two somebodies._ And yet there was only one set of chains. Riku didn't know what to make of that.

"Well," Sora shrugged, "Might as well try it." he held up the keyring, dangling it back and forth.

"You're kidding."

"It's a vent! That means it's for air, doesn't it?"

"Uh...I mean..."

"And air comes from outside. I told you we'd find an exit in here, didn't I?"

Riku figured there was no point trying to burst Sora's bubble. He had a point, anyway, Riku couldn't deny that.

"Fine, let's try it," he positioned himself so as to give Sora another boost.

"Really?" Sora looked abjectly surprised Riku was agreeing with him, "Uh...okay, great. Maybe..." he looked uncertainly back into the main lab, or whatever it was, "Maybe we should, like, shut off the lights in there, first?"

"Sure, if you really like the idea of climbing up there in the dark. If anyone's followed us this far, they'll know we hid in here the second they see the broken down door anyway."

That seemed to reassure Sora somewhat, "If they haven't already busted a kneecap with my ingenious tripwire."

"That's the spirit." But Riku couldn't keep back a little smile.

Sora stepped into Riku's hands carefully, holding the keyring uncertainly in his hand, "There are...uh...a lot of keys here. This might take a while."

"It wouldn't take so long if you weren't talking!" Riku responded, trying to keep steady under Sora's weight.

"Okay, fine, be a dick," Sora said flippantly, cycling through each key on the ring. Maybe Riku was imagining it, but he seemed to be taking his sweet time.

Eventually, however, Sora let out a happy little laugh, " _There_ we go!" He turned the key in the lock, though apparently years of being locked up tightly had weakened the hinges to the point that the door fell to the floor the moment Sora pulled on it.

"Whoa!" Sora cried, as Riku reeled back from the falling hunk of solid metal, narrowly missing it.

"Shit!" Riku got back to his knees, looking up at Sora, who had managed to grab onto something beyond the door, and was now dangling somewhat comically a few inches above the floor, "You okay?"

"No, I'm really frigging tired of this, to be honest," he clambered up a little, his head vanishing into the darkness, "There's a ladder here! C'mon, I'll give you a hand."

He reached down with one hand. Riku wondered if Sora could manage his weight, along with the unsteady ladder, but he supposed he had to credit Sora for at least trying, after all this.

"Thanks," he accepted the hand and allowed Sora to, with some effort, drag him up and through the trapdoor after him.

"Jeez, you're heavier than you look." Sora groaned.

"Books and covers, remember?" Riku quipped, using his free hand to grab at the lowest of the rusty, dusty metal rungs built into the side of the narrow rectangular shaft, "Let's see where this goes."

Sora obliged, starting up the ladder, with Riku continuing a rung or two beneath him. The tunnel was eerily reminiscent of the vent he'd crawled through with Ariel. Riku wondered, not for the first time, what had become of her. He should've asked Leonhart, or even Seifer, when they'd showed up.

He'd made himself responsible for her, and he'd lost her too. More evidence that his life was just one big pile of broken promises and loose ends.

"Do you hear that?" in the confines of the tunnel, Sora's voice seemed to come from both above and beneath them.

"Hear what?"

" _That_." Sora repeated, quite unhelpfully, "That earthquake noise from before."

So Riku craned his ears to listen and, indeed, could hear something like a distant hum echoing through the sides of the chute.

"Yeah," he said at last, "Yeah, maybe we should back down? Till it passes."

"Why? It's a longer way down. There's another door right up here." Riku heard a clanking, as of Sora tapping something above him, "Like a manhole cover, or something."

"Manhole?" That couldn't be right. If it was a manhole grate, then there would be slots in it, looking out to the outside. All Riku could see looking up was more darkness.

Unless, of course, that _was_ the outside. They were still underground.

"This thing's heavy," Sora groaned, pushing up against the grate, "Come on, help me."

Riku wasn't exactly thrilled about this, but he complied, inching the rest of the way up the ladder to squeeze in beside Sora, just under the grate.

"It's getting closer," Riku pointed out, hearing the increasing rumble.

"Yeah," Sora agreed, "We'd better get moving."

"Fine," Riku positioned his weight under the grate alongside Sora, "On three?"

"Why? Let's just get it over with."

Riku sighed, "Okay, then..."

"It _is_ pretty loud," Sora said suddenly, barely under Riku's hearing, "almost on top of...

"... _now_!" Riku heaved the hatch open, lifting his head out to look around him, just in time to see a gleaming light bearing down on him, accompanied by a monstrous mechanical roar and a blaring whistle.

"Get down!" Sora yelled unnecessarily, grabbing Riku by the hem of his teeshirt and tugging him back under the hatch just as the oncoming train clattered right by them.

A hail of dust and granite came raining down through the open hatch, disturbed by the movement of the train on the adjacent track. Riku's ears were screaming, overloaded with the noise. His breaths were rapid and short as he coughed more dust from his lungs.

"Subway," Sora said hoarsely, "We were under the train tracks the whole time."

"N-no kidding..." Riku pressed a free hand to his head, feeling the cold sweat that had come beading up on his brow, "Shit."

"I think we're good," Sora climbed out of the hatch, pulling himself up onto his knees before looking back down at Riku, "Yeah, cost is clear."

"Are you crazy?" Riku hissed, "What happens when another train comes by? We'll be trapped!"

Sora rolled his eyes, "That train passed, what, a minute ago? It's Sunday, right? They all run fifteen minutes apart. We're good for now."

He must have seen Riku's look of baffled incomprehension, "You've never taken the train before?"

"...no," Riku replied simply, climbing out of the hatch and onto his hands and knees in the uneven gravel.

Inexplicably, Sora laughed, "I guess being poor and bikeless pays off." But he still reached a hand to help Riku up, "I've got an idea."

"Do you?" Riku got slowly to his feet, his heartbeat slowly but surely returning to normal. The tunnel was dark, yes, but lit every few feet with dark orange wall lamps. To their right was the track the latest train had just gone down, and to their left...

"Sunset Line," Sora indicated the stalled train on the left track, a little ahead of them. It was bright yellow, red and orange, almost obnoxiously bright after all the bleak, subdued shades of the Underworld, "Probably the Twilight local."

"Why's it just sitting here?" asked Riku.

"It hasn't started its line yet," Sora explained, already moving to the rear car of the train, with a surprising swiftness considering his bandaged leg, "If that was the Destiny express that almost ran you over..."

"Ha."

"...than this one should start up in a couple of..."

There was a sharp whistling and, with another furious mechanical groan, the train began to slowly move forward.

"Hurry up!" Sora urged, following his own advice and, like an Olympic pole vaulter, grabbing onto the safety railing of the train's rear platform and heaving himself over it, stretching out his hand for Riku to take.

"You're insane!" Riku blurted.

"Clock's ticking, don't say I didn't warn ya!"

And, indeed, the train was slowly picking up speed. Steeling his nerves, Riku ran the last two paces to the train, grabbed Sora's hand and let him pull him over the railing, so they both fell, panting, against the door of the rear car.

"Holy shit," Riku breathed incredulously, looking out as the track ahead of (behind?) them rapidly became a receding blur.

"Better than walking on train tracks the rest of the way, right?" Sora shrugged, turning his attention to the door, which opened quite effortlessly.

"Yeah..." Riku nodded, recovering himself, "Yeah. Really, Sora, that was...that was pretty amazing."

"Aw, shucks," Sora held the door open for Riku to pass into the car, "I'd agree with you, but I've been trying not to be an arrogant tool." He looked more pleased with himself than he had since Riku had seen him in the Coliseum.

No, that wasn't right...he looked happier than he had since that night at Kairi's house, where Riku had shown up and, quite spectacularly ruined everything for him.

"Was that a dig?" Riku asked, heading into the dimly lit, empty passenger car.

"What? Nah," Sora shut the door behind them, effectively muting the whistling of the wind outside the train, "Come on. We're home free."

* * *

The principal had one of those big, bright, toothy grins that seemed to suggest everything was amazing and you should think so too.

Celeste almost wished she could say it worked.

"We'll have the whole thing!" he was saying, practically bouncing up and down in his seat, flailing his arms around with an irresponsibly childlike glee, "Music, speeches, _posters_! Oh, it'll be spectacular, just spectacular, no better way to get the spirits up, no better..."

"Principal Skelton..." Celeste began, smiling awkwardly, only to be cut off by the principal lifting his long, bony hand before her face as if to stop her.

"That's _Skellington_ , dear lady," he corrected, tapping the nameplate on his desk as if to demonstrate, "The _ing_ isn't silent, just whispered." he grinned again.

Celeste wished she understood what that was supposed to mean, but she nodded anyway, "Principal Skellington."

He clapped his hands as if to congratulate her, a gesture that Celeste may have seen as condescending if he weren't so genuine about it.

"I appreciate your...er...enthusiasm, really, I do, but I'm not sure if an assembly is the best idea..."

"Nonsense!" he leaned back in his chair, long, spindly legs kicking up under the desk as if he were some marionette caught in a wind, "Celebration is how we _heal_ , dear lady. We are creatures of community!"

He swept to his feet and, before Celeste could say anything different, had looped one arm through hers, leading her out of his office and down the hall, past rows of lockers that, in the empty school building, looked anything but festive.

"Your grief is our grief, Celeste, Sora's loss is our loss," he pronounced Sora's name strangely, So _ra_ , as if he were some Egyptian deity, "He brightened up our each and every day with his presence alone. And Kairi, her temperance and good spirit were an inspiration to all she knew. And Riku..." he paused, his grin appearing a little fixed, "...he too was a student. And a student he was."

"A student he was," echoed Celeste feebly.

"Only by coming together as a group, uniting as a community of students, teachers and parents all, can we truly be uplifted!" he continued, practically skipping for joy, "A show of strength, of resilience, a reminder that we are _not alone_!"

"That's really very kind of you, Principal," said Celeste, "but I'm not sure if I really have the time to..."

"What's this?" Skellington asked suddenly, bounding ahead so quickly Celeste was surprised he didn't start flying, hurrying to an open door a little way down the hall, "Why, Mr. Thatch," the muffled yelp from inside the room indicated that it was, indeed, Mr. Thatch, "Working on a Sunday?"

 _Well, this just gets better and better._

Celeste hadn't been expecting to cross paths with the history teacher again, at least not so soon after last night. And, whatever she'd told Amphitrite this morning, she wasn't entirely feeling unruffled about the idea of seeing him again.

But maybe that was all down to Amphitrite and her candid insinuations in the first place.

"Oh, Principal Skellington," Thatch appeared in the doorway just as Celeste caught up, "Sora's Mother." he looked past him to her, his tongue seeming for a few moments to get stoppered up with glue.

"Mr. Thatch," Celeste said as smoothly as she could, trying her damnedest to communicate with eyes alone that the hyperactive principal be given no indication they'd ever met outside the walls of this building before, much less under 24 hours ago.

"I was just doing..." he cleared his throat awkwardly, "Paganism."

"Sounds delightful!" declared Skellington.

"Well, I mean...my lesson plan," amended Thatch hastily, "On Druidic paganism. I wasn't...I wasn't _doing_ paganism..."

"Sora's mother and I..." Celeste opened her mouth to tell Skellington that she did, indeed, have a last name, but she was cut off by the principal's hand clapping jovially on her shoulder, "...were just planning an assembly!"

"We were?" asked Celeste, aware of Thatch smiling, abashed, out of the corner of her eye, "We were."

"For...er...for Sora?" asked Thatch.

"For _everyone_!" amended Skellington, "I feel we could all benefit from a bit of good cheer, don't you?"

"Cheer is...good," said Thatch at length, "When, exactly?"

"Oh, as soon as possible!" he said as if it should be painfully obvious.

"That's very heartening,"

"You will be helping, of course?"

Thatch blinked vacantly, his smile suddenly appearing very fixed.

"Yes, Mr. Thatch," said Celeste through a forced smile, "Since you're so very enthused about it?"

"Well...er..."

"Oh, it'll be wonderful!" Skellington practically twirled away, though at least his arm was off Celeste's shoulder, "I'll start planning for decorations at once! We'll be needing poster board, so _much_ poster board!"

He was practically singing as he trotted down the hall and out of sight, as if he'd forgotten Celeste was there.

"I suppose I've been conscripted," said Thatch awkwardly.

"I suppose you have."

"This wasn't your idea, was it?" he sighed, "Of course it wasn't. He means well, though..."

"Doesn't everyone?" Celeste shrugged, leaning against the classroom doorway, "I don't know...maybe I'm being too cynical."

"Given your position, cynicism isn't all that surprising," he put his hands in his vest, shrugging.

"It's not like I _want_ to be this way. And I _have_ been trying to be positive, really, but..." she shook her head, "I can't get my mind off Sora. And whenever someone tells me to cheer up, not get discouraged, stay positive..."

"I understand."

"No you don't," she said it quickly, sharply, "You can't."

She crossed her arms, moving further into the classroom, looking around at the rows of empty desks, wondering which one was her son's, as if it mattered, as if it meant anything.

"Everyone says that, that they understand, that they know what I'm going through, but they don't. And that's a good thing, believe me. You don't _want_ to know what it's like."

She traced her finger over the surface of one desk, looking at the faint pencil doodles on the surface, the funny faces, the scrawled initials. There was something like a weird pineapple in the upper corner, with a smiley face. Celeste traced it with her finger, smiling despite herself.

"They say that when you become a mother, you...you give up a part of yourself. It's true, and it can't be helped. There's something..." she patted her own heart, searching for words, "...deep, deep inside that belongs only to your child. A connection. You can _feel_ things, when something's wrong, when they're in trouble..."

Thatch was quiet, leaning on his desk. It seemed like there were miles between them. Celeste's head was pounding, her breath ragged.

"And you start relying on that feeling, because it ends up being all you have, your only way of...of knowing if..." her words dissolved, and the tears came to her eyes.

"I can't do it anymore," she wasn't even talking to Thatch anymore, just looking down at the desk, feeling tears on her face, "this waiting, this wondering, not even _knowing_...not again, that's what I promised myself, never again..."

"Never again?" Thatch moved almost as if he wanted to come out from behind the desk, but he seemed to stop himself.

Celeste lifted a hand to her mouth, "It's nothing. You don't want to..."

"But _you_ do," he said, "Don't you? You want to tell somebody," he cleared his throat, "Well, I know we're still barely strangers, but...I've been told I'm a good listener."

Celeste bit her lip, "It's...it's a long time ago. I don't talk about it very often."

He was sitting on his desk, hands crossed in his lap, glasses wobbling on the bridge of his noise, "I won't make you."

And Celeste believed that, "All my life, I've made something of a career for myself, not letting others tell me what to do," she said with a bare whiff of humor, "They used to call it spunk, said it would get me a long way."

"Your friends?"

"My parents," Celeste replied, "My mother especially. She was...particularly proud of that, said I must have got it from her. I didn't let anyone order me around, I had goals, I had dreams, and I put my mind to things. She said it would get me far in life..."

She sighed, "And then I fell in love. And suddenly my judgment wasn't so good anymore." she shrugged, "And, given how he and I ended up, maybe they had a point."

Thatch spoke haltingly, "He..."

"Doesn't matter. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was telling myself he did, despite all evidence to the contrary."

It seemed so long ago that she'd been telling this same story to Aerith at Cid's, luxuriating in her own pity, in how far she'd come, only to come home that very night and realize she had lost her son, after all.

"I didn't know what to do with myself after he left. For a long time. It hurt to just think about it. My mother, helpful as ever, told me I'd made this mess of mine, and I was suffering through no other fault than my own.

"I shouldn't have been surprised," she nodded, "That was her way, all the time. Never was gonna pass up a chance at an 'I told you so'. Every time I told her, 'you wait, he'll come back, he hasn't abandoned us', she'd just...smile one of those prim, proper smiles of hers and say 'And just what do you think he'll find when he does?'"

She'd tried so hard to keep those memories at bay these long years, and it had worked more often than not. But now, with each day that she woke up, not knowing where Sora was, if he was safe, if he was scared, they'd begun to return, to haunt her.

"You know what the worst past is?" she asked Thatch, who was perced at the edge of his desk, still as a stone, as if afraid the slightest movement would break him, or maybe break her, "She was right. I wasn't doing myself any good, waiting for him. And I wasn't doing Sora any better, either. I was killing him."

"Celeste..." he said her name with an uncertain apprehension, getting to his feet, "you can't possibly..."

"What? Neglect my own son? Let him cry in the night while I went up to the roof to think about where I went wrong? Fill his head with stories about a father that he couldn't remember? Leave him alone, while I went driving out on harebrained quests for a man who I didn't know how to find and _knew_ wouldn't want to come back for me?"

Thatch didn't say anything to that.

"My mother saw, she knew what was wrong with me, what _I'd_ done to myself. And she loved being right, it's about the only thing that ever made her happy. But that wasn't enough, just knowing I'd lost. She had to make sure she _won._ That she got something out of all this."

"What could she possibly..." but Thatch stopped himself, "Sora."

"I can't blame her. She was right. I wasn't fit to raise a child, not then. Sora, he was just barely a toddler...three, four years old. What else would a concerned grandmother do, then make herself there for her grandson?"

She sighed, a deep, broken sigh, "The court order came on Sora's birthday. She wanted custody of him, claimed I was unfit. I remember...opening the envelope, Sora sitting up at his playtable, stuffing himself with cake, totally oblivious as I read it."

She looked across at Thatch, "And then I woke up. And I realized...this longing I'd been feeling those years, that pain, that sadness, that was nothing, nothing compared to what Sora must have felt." she pressed her hand to her heart again, "That was the first time I really noticed...the connection I had with my boy. I was disgusted, hated myself, what I'd done. And I knew I had to do something, I had to fight..."

"Your mother backed off?"

"She threw everything she had at me. The things she did, to make me look bad, when I was _finally_ trying to pick myself back up again..." she felt the tears on her lashes, and made no motion to wipe them, "But I fought her...with a strength I didn't know I even had. at...at the time I assumed it was just anger, at her, at myself... But I don't think that was it. It was _Sora_. Realizing what he meant to me, this beautiful, happy little kid who never had a frown, never let anything upset him... _He_ gave me that strength.

"And now..." she spread her arms wide, sinking into the chair, "...now that Sora _has_ been taken from me, what am I doing? Going out to nightclubs, getting drunk, planning _school assemblies_! I've been trying to find that strength, Milo," only later would she realize she'd said his first name, "that...that anger, that resolve. But I can't."

She let her head drop to the surface of the desk, one that she felt might be Sora's, but she really had no idea, sobbing into her arms.

"I don't know what to do," she said softly, "Not anymore."

She felt something on her shoulder, and realized he'd put his hand on her shoulder. No words of comfort, of encouragement, no assurance that it was all going to be okay. Just his hand, his silence, letting her cry.

It wasn't quite what Celeste thought she needed, but perhaps the most helpful thing anyone had done for her in days all the same.

* * *

"I still can't believe you were able to get out of that thing early," Larxene reiterated, maybe still too fixed on the hyperactive madness of this morning.

Marluxia shrugged, tossing a thick lock of his cotton candy hair (Larxene had never asked, as much as she really wanted to know) "I might have gotten out even earlier if it weren't for a Certain Someone's Bi-Monthly passive aggressive tantrum."

Larxene swallowed a laugh, taking the narrow pavement steps that divided the shopping district from the residential, "Is it bad that I kinda feel _bad_ for Vexen?"

"You feel bad for people?"

"The type of pity you reserve for little kids and kittens," Larxene shrugged.

"Well, it's wasted on Vexen either way. Guy's a giant blowhard"

Unbidden, an image of Axel, halfway out her window, making faces at the very idea of Marluxia's existence, came to her mind, and Larxene smirked.

"I always thought you two had a lot in common."

"Someone get me my dueling pistols, I do think those were fighting words."

She rolled her eyes, jumping up onto the curb while Marluxia ascended the last two stairs, delicate white hand lightly clutching the banister, as if afraid he'd somehow slip and fall. The boots couldn't possibly be _that_ tight.

"Well, you're both smart," Larxene starting rattling off on her fingers, the better to convince him, "Professional. Quiet."

"I _wish_ Vexen was quiet. You should have heard him whining about project funding for the whole lunch hour."

"Ah, but he knows what he wants!" Larxene nodded at Luxia significantly, "And, also like you, his talents continue to go by woefully beneath notice."

"Well, when you put it that way..." he paused, as if seriously considering, "Hm. Not, not exactly, I got that promotion, so I must be at least on _some_ level of notice."

"Watch out, give it a day or two and _you'll_ be the one he cozies up to for project funding."

"Maybe I'll be nice. Rack up some good karma."

"And a valuable ally to boot," she winked at him, "I hear the Board gets very cliquey."

"You don't know the half of it."

"That bad, huh?" she snickered, brushing a loose strand of hair from her eyes, "Well, just make sure a certain hazel eyed beauty ends up first in line for that old desk with your name on it, huh?"

"Or else..." he paused, leaning against a conveniently situated lamppost at the corner of Benson and O'Hara, "What, exactly?"

"Ooh, is that a challenge?" she stopped across from him, arms crossed.

He shrugged, smiling inscrutably. Larxene considered, a finger pressed to her mouth in an exaggerated expression of thoughtfulness.

"Stumped?"

"No, no..." she shook her head, "There are just so, _so_ many things that I _could_ do, that now I'm having trouble picking just one."

"Really, such a demure girl like you?"

 _Demure. There's a first._

Sure, Luxia no doubt meant it ironically, but... Larxene had never been called demure, she'd rarely been called 'nice' either, or gentle or even pretty, unless Axel was feeling particularly cheesy.

But Luxia tossed the compliments, the pet names around as if it were nothing. And, sure, sometimes it was nice to hear it, gratifying even.

But Larxene had never really thought of herself in those terms. Well, she considered herself pretty, sometimes when she was in a good mood. But the other things...demure, gentle, graceful...

That was never her. Larxene had no recollection of _attempting_ to make it 'her' either, so what gives?

And maybe he was just trying to be nice, to say the things a guy should say to his girl. But over time, it began to feel like he was just addressing some other girl, any girl. Not her.

But maybe that was just Larxene's own fault, for becoming the girl she was now, and maybe never stopping long enough to recognize the new her.

Or maybe Axel had just put too much drivel into her head, maybe she was just reeling from last night, maybe she should just calm herself down and put him out of her head, out of sight, out of mind, as it had been these few years that had, regardless, dragged on so long.

"Oh, Luxia..." she told him at last, shirking her lips into a little smirk, "you have _no_ idea what I'm capable of."

"Of course...how could I ever have forgotten," he lowered his arms to his sides with an easy gait, coming off from the lamppost and continued down the street at her side, "You're a regular force of nature."

"You think so?" she asked, but her mind was already working in a completely different direction.

 _Forces of nature. Lightning bolts, quick, sudden, painless, but shocking. Or maybe fire, burning, smoldering, beautiful to look at but destroying everything it touches. Or maybe just the moon, quiet and bright, but not warm, never warm, always there but never a part of anything._

She felt Marluxia's hands in her hair, felt his lips plant a soft kiss on her forehead, right there in the narrow cobblestone walkway.

"I know so," he whispered against her skin, running one hand through her hair.

A sharp whistle of the train passing along the elevated tracks echoed from a few blocks away. Larxene supposed it would have taken her out of the moment, if she'd really been 'in' it in the first place.

"Well, we'll just have to see, won't we?"," she told him lightly, "Now, c'mon. Home's waiting, and we've got the office to get to tomorrow."

"Eh, I think I might sleep in. executive privilege."

"Well, don't rub it in," she rolled her eyes, "Besides, it's probably not the hottest move showing up late to your first day on the Board."

"Half those old sots are late every day, they wouldn't be there to notice if I wasn't there on time."

Larxene chuckled lightly, "Well, even so..."

A sharp whistle of police sirens cut her off as, down at the end of the block, where Benson met Beaumont, about half a dozen TPD squad cars went speeding off east.

"Must be some commotion somewhere," Marluxia observed wryly, "Wouldn't want to be wherever they're going."

Larxene would have said something, knew she _should_ say something, if only to keep Marluxia placated, but she couldn't.

She could feel her fingers twitching at her sides, her mouth going dry. Some old reflexive reaction, the same one that had guided her so well in all those street brawls and bike races, was telling her to run, but whether toward the cop cars or away, back to the safety and comfort of her own bed, she couldn't be sure.

 _They couldn't have caught him, could they? He left this morning, he's had plenty of time to be well away from here, there's no way..._

And then other, more insidious thoughts, _What if he gives you up? No he would never do that, not to you._

 _Don't be an idiot, you know all too well what he could do to you, what he_ has _done to you. How can you already have gone so soft after one night?_

One night, sure. But, it was a night that she'd _felt_ more than she had on any other night in what seemed like forever.

Felt young, felt like herself, felt like she _mattered_. Felt alive.

"You alright?" she heard his voice at her ear, so sharply reminding where she was that she couldn't help but gasp.

Marluxia had a hand on her arm, gentle, but present all the same, "Larxene, are you okay?"

Taking a deep breath, Larxene nodded, "Yeah...yeah, guess I just...zoned out."

"Brown Girl in the Ring?" he asked, "I tell you, about four different times on the drive back and forth, I had to shake that song out of my head. I swear, your brother's cursed me out of spite."

"I wouldn't put it past him," she said, despite herself, remembering his little comment about Dem's concert, how dismissive he'd been.

She hadn't felt bad about it at the time. Hell, who was she to talk, really? She'd only gone because Axel had convinced her...

Yet, somehow, that fact didn't make her feel any better.

"Ah, here we are," he declared at last, "Home sweet home."

"You must be exhausted," Larxene opened the garden gate, if only to stop that little gallant swish he so loved to employ on it, always standing aside so she could go up the lane. Just good manners, she knew, but again she wasn't quite in the mood today.

"It's barely seven o'clock," she indicated the setting sun, orange and gold over the green and brown hills to the west, bathing the roofs of town in the luscious, rich hues that had lent it its name.

"I might have time for one celebratory glass of wine," he smiled at her, pushing his hair over his shoulder, "Maybe two."

"White Zinfandel?"

"I thought you didn't like it?"

"No," she told him, turning the key in the lock, "But you do."

"Hm," he pressed a hand to his heart, "you must really love me."

Larxene made a little noise, as if to agree, but that was all she could manage, stepping through the doorway and into the house where she was, of course, greeted by the none-too-kind screeches of her brother's avian familiar.

"Oh, calm down!" Larxene scolded, switching the lights on, "If we were burglars, we woulda shot you already."

"You say that as if it's not an option," Marluxia chuckled, shedding his oyster gray jacket (which, of course, perfectly matched his trousers, while offsetting his violet shirt) to hang on the brass coat peg

Larxene turned to chide him, but another noise caught her attention. A little rustle, almost like a sharp intake of breath.

Again, old reflexes seemed to kick into gear at once. She stood stock still just behind the sofa, with a quick furtive look back at Luxia, who was reaching for the TV remote on the coffee table, seemingly oblivious.

Really only half aware of what she was doing, Larxene shunted one foot over under the sofa, if only to make certain there was no one there.

There wasn't, and her ankle thunked against the wood rim of the thing for nothing.

"Ow!" she cried out, rubbing her thigh as Marluxia turned in surprise.

"You okay?"

"Er...yeah," she told him, "Peaches and cream. Hey, um..." she jerked her thumb down the hall toward the kitchen, "Whaddaya say I go pour the wine?"

"You sure?"

"Well, yeah, you know how I'm always bitching you pour too much. Might as well learn for myself."

"Well, if you like I can..."

"You just sit tight, you need to rest your blisters anyway."

"If you say so," he said with a little laugh, but Larxene was already down the hall, in the kitchen.

Turning on the light, she saw the room was immaculately pristine as she always kept it. Quiet, no noise but Luxia flicking through channels in the other room.

Taking a breath to calm herself, Larxene crossed over to the pantry, opened the door, and nearly screamed out loud.

"Shh, Jesus, Rene!" Axel hissed, reached forward to press one hand over her mouth, with the other holding a bottle up as if for her inspection, "This what you're looking for?"

With righteous anger, Larxene pulled his hand from her mouth, "That's strawberry schnapps."

"Hey, no need to swear, I'm not exactly cozy here either."

"What are you _doing_..."

"Everything all right back there?" Luxia's voice from down the hall, vaguely concerned.

Larxene turned to Axel, who was looking her over, not sadly, not pleading, not even all that scared. Just a sheepish, mopey sort of face that almost seemed to say, ' _Hey, you do what you gotta do_.'

"Yeah!" she called back, not taking her eyes off Axel, "Thought I saw a bug."

"Bugs, really? I'll have to put more chives in that window box."

" _Chives?_ " Axel hissed through thin lips, but he quailed under a look from Larxene.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded in a screechy whisper.

"Look, I'll explain, I promise, but maybe now's not the best time..."

"No shit it's not the best time! How did you even get inside?"

"That's not important..."

She seized the bottle from his hand with such force she was surprised he didn't cry out.

"Window was open," Axel told her with some resentment, nodding toward the aforementioned chiveless window.

"I swear to _God_ , Axel..."

"Look, you just go and have your bubbly with Lotus Blossom, I'll be here when you're done."

"Larxene, who are you talking..." she heard the footsteps on the floor behind her, saw the smile curdled on Axel's face.

"Larxene." Marluxia stood in the kitchen doorway, face slack in an expression of muted surprise, looking from her to Axel and back again.

Forcing herself to meet his eyes, Larxene said, "Luxia, I..."

"I," Axel interrupted her, in a clearer voice, though he didn't look nearly as calm as he was trying to sound, "I can explain."

* * *

The rocking of the train beneath them probably would have been soothing and restful. Maybe Sora would have been lulled to sleep, like old day trips to the lake, he drooling no doubt adorably into his Mom's lap.

But Sora was _not_ five years old and coming back from a day of rollicking fun and adventure. He was 18, felt a good decade or four older, and was on his way back from Hell on Earth in Little Suburbia.

"I can't believe it," he said softly, leaning his head against the cracked, worn leather of the seat, "We made it. We _really_ got out."

"You already said that," said Riku sleepily, lifting his head from the window which he had _very conveniently_ moved to sit next to the moment they'd moved into the train car.

Sora had considered putting up a fight for the window seat, given that they'd already well established it was all on Riku's account that Sora had gotten into this mess in the first place, but Sora was just as tired as he was and figured there was no point in it.

"Yeah, I already said it," Sora figured he was gonna press on this topic, if only to give Riku _some_ small measure of discomfort, "I'll keep saying it. Do you know how many times I thought I was gonna die down there?"

"Probably a lot," said Riku with some reticence, almost looking Sora's way, but then back at the nondescript darkness of the tunnel outside the window.

"Got it on the nose."

"Sora..." when he spoke, it was heavily, parsing out his words, "I...I know there's probably nothing I can say that'll...that'll make any difference..."

"Any difference to what?" But Sora wasn't quite _that_ dense. A part of him did really want Riku to say it, though.

"I'm sorry. I am... _so_ sorry about everything. You and...and Kairi too. I know that's not enough, it's just words, but..."

"You're right," said Sora quickly, "it's not enough."

Riku winced, his usually impassive, enigmatic, expression faltering. Sora might have experienced a little twinge of satisfaction, of knowing he'd put Kairi's stalker (even if not her kidnapper) in his place, that he'd finally gotten to say what he'd been wanting to say all this time.

But the fact that Riku had been expecting it, that took a lot of that away. Which Sora supposed was fairly appropriate for Riku, all things considered.

"When we get out of here, you're gonna help us find Kairi," Sora told him in as assured a tone as he could manage, "You owe her that."

Riku nodded, slowly, but unflinchingly, "Yeah. Yeah, of course I will."

"Words without action are useless," he told Riku, "My...um...my Mom says that sometimes."

He cleared his throat, as Riku shifted in his seat. Feeling he should probably say more, he added, "Hey, maybe Kairi'll be okay with the apology thing too, she's cool like that. But, you know...up to her."

Riku nodded. They trundled on in silence, the dim orange lights of the train car flickering on and off in a very regular rhythm of disrepair.

Sora supposed he should say something else, maybe crack some kind of stupid joke, if only because having the moral high ground was _much more frigging_ exhausting than his Mom had ever made it sound.

But that's just it...he _was_ exhausted. Sure, he may only have been down there three days but it had felt like so much longer, like a whole other life.

 _It was, wasn't it? And it is, now. You're never gonna be the same guy you were going in._

His leg seemed to twitch at that, beneath Riku's makeshift tourniquet.

"There's no one," Riku said at last.

"What?"

"Nobody else. On the train, I mean. Isn't some guy supposed to, like, check if we have tickets or something?"

Sora looked up and down the car, at the empty seats across, before and behind them.

"Well...yeah, but we haven't even gotten to the first stop yet. Conductor's probably having a smoke way at the front of the train."

"Yeah..." Riku sighed, "I guess."

"What? Nervous?"

"I...uh..." he shrugged, "I guess. You're not?"

"Well, I mean, _I_ 'm not a wanted criminal, so..." but he saw a hesitation in Riku's face, the way he looked toward the window, then back to Sora, as if ashamed, and he sighed.

"Look, for what it's worth...I'll vouch for you," he said at length, "You didn't do the crime they arrested you for, so that's gotta count for something."

"You only have my word for that,"

"What? It's not true?"

Riku's mouth twitched into something that was almost a smile, and Sora shrugged easily, "Look, I'm _really_ tired of thinking everyone around me's lying. At this point, you're the most trustworthy guy I've met in days."

"Sounds rough," but his smile was genuine now.

"It _is_ ," he sighed, getting shakily to his feet.

"Going somewhere?"

"The can," Sora said breezily, "You don't want to know the last time I felt safe enough to pee."

Riku blinked blankly, but Sora was already heading down the aisle, hands outstretched to either side to keep his balance.

A crackily voice blared on through the speakers, announcing, " _This is your 7:30 Sunset Line, making all local stops to Sunset Station. Next stop on this train is Twilight Heights,_ "

Sora and Riku would need to get connecting service back to Destiny, Sora thought wryly. Or else just drag themselves into the nearest police station like the battered and bloody street urchins they were.

He stopped at the door labeled ' _FACILITIES_ ' near the head of the car, noting that the latch was wobbly and loose. Ah, well, even if the thing jolted open on him, it wasn't like anyone was gonna...

The door slid open before Sora had even gotten his hands on it, a 5'9, 280 lbs dead weight falling forward right into him, pressing him against the wall to the opposite side.

Struggling to keep his hurt leg from just giving way beneath him, Sora threw out his arms to keep steady, eye-to-eye with the gaping, twisted, yet frozen face of someone who was quite obviously the absent train conductor.

Absent in, well, more ways than one.

"Shit," Sora breathed, pushing with all the force he had against the still-warm corpse, letting it fall backward into the bathroom, the swinging door slamming against the man's not-at-all modest waist, pinning it in place.

"Aw shit," he said again, looking down at the man, at his bright orange and red Twilight Line uniform, stained even redder in places with blood still oozing with regularity from the perfectly round bullet hole in his forehead.

The floor swaying under Sora's feet suddenly seemed even more disorienting than it had been before. Forcing himself to keep cool, Sora looked up from the body and, with resolute purpose, said, "Riku," if only to remind himself of the priorities.

" _Riku!_ " he hissed in as loud a whisper as he could, half running, half flailing down the passage.

"What is it?" Riku lifted his head from the window as Sora all but fell back into the seat beside him, spurred by the rocking of the train, "Jesus, what the hell are you running from?"

" _Dead_!" Sora blurted out desperately.

" _What?_ "

"Tickets! He can't take our tickets, man, because he's dead!"

Riku was sitting up straight now, putting a hand on Sora's shoulder that, in saner, more reasoned times, he might have shook off at once.

"What, you mean...the _conductor_?"

"There's no else, is there?"

"Hm, well I don't know about _that,_ " drawled a frighteningly familiar voice, as Sora felt a cold, solid pressure against his temple, just as a gloved hand reached through the gap between the two seats, pressing the long, thin barrel of a gun against Riku's head.

Two clicks from close quarters, as the guns pressed against both Sora's head and Riku's were cocked.

"You know, Sunshine, I'm impressed," Xigbar drawled, his lone, amber eye looking him up and down from his perch in the row behind them, "Coupla times back there, I thought for sure you were gonna end up kibble. O'course, that was before half the ring blew up, but you made it work. I respect that."

"You _know_ this guy?" Riku asked tensely.

"No!" Sora replied quickly, "I mean kinda, but..."

"Let's call it passing acquaintances," he chuckled, "You know, your little stunt with the motorcycle really got those fatheads talking."

"Wow, and I hadn't even practiced," said Riku dryly.

"Ooh, this one's got a sense of humor," Xigbar chuckled, leaning back in his seat, his guns akimbo not moving an inch from either of their heads, "S'cool. You see, recent events have ensured that the Underworld's about to get a hella lot hotter. And you two making a break for the land of fresh air and tulips..."

"So that's it?" asked Sora tensely, gripping onto the armrest with one hand, "They sent you to get rid of us? Make sure we don't talk?"

"They'd really like that, I bet..." Xigbar nodded, "Trouble for them is, _they_ didn't send me."

Riku gave Sora a look, some sort of question that Sora was pretty sure he could neither divine nor answer.

"I've got one job and one job only. Deliver the silver Adonis over here," he pressed the barrel of his right gun that much farther into the back of Riku's head, causing him to wince, "safe and sound to my people."

"And who are _your_ people?" asked Riku, "I thought Hades wanted to hold me hostage."

"So did he. But guys like him...they do so much talking, fluffing up their feathers as it were," he chuckled darkly, "They never pay attention to the important stuff. Sunshine knows what I'm talking about, don't you, Sunshine?"

Forcing himself against every inclination in his body to keep still, Sora asked him, "You want Riku?"

"Not an answer to my question, but it was a rhetorical one, so I won't throw a fit."

"You can have him," Sora could see Riku turn to look at him out of the corner of his eye, eyes wide in muted panic, "What about me?"

"Shit, that's _cold_ ," Xigbar said with positive delight, looking over at Riku, "Little Spartacus here just sold your ass out."

"So he did," said Riku tightly.

" _What are you gonna do to me?_ "

"Hm..." Xigbar considered, "actually, yanno, that's a pretty good question."

With his free hand Sora reached out, grasping once, twice, before getting ahold of Riku's wrist. He could feel him tense between his fingers, but Sora, looking so far to the right he was afraid his eyes might pop out, shook his head barely perceptibly.

" _Idea?_ " he mouthed to Riku.

Riku blinked blankly. Because of course, why wouldn't his delinquent not-kidnapper/unwilling accomplice have mastered the art of lip-reading?

"You've got a talent kid," Xigbar continued, "For getting yourself in places where you're not wanted, and you woulda been better off never stepping foot in in the first place. I can relate."

Sora squeezed Riku's wrist again, finding it to be uncomfortably sweaty, but maybe he had no room to talk.

" _Plan_?" he mouthed again, with more urgency.

Riku remained stone-faced as ever. Sora suppressed the overwhelming urge to let loose a litany of cuss words.

"Yeah..." Xigbar sighed, "guess there's nothing else for it, Sunshine. No place for you where I'm going so..." he shrugged, "Looks like I'm gonna have to kill ya. No hard..."

"Plan!" Sora screamed in Riku's face, at the same time pulling him forward by the arm so they both went tumbling out of their seats onto the floor of the car.

Sora heard one, two muffled pops from behind them, a swear from Xigbar, clearly too trigger happy for his own good.

"What the hell?" Riku demanded, eyes wide and voice shaky, clearly doing all he could to avoid looking at the twin smoking holes through the leather of the seats above them.

"He was gonna shoot me, I was desperate, _come on!_ " practically dragging Riku along by the arm, Sora started off up the corridor.

"You really wanna try this kid?" Xigbar's voice echoed up the way to them, "There's nowhere for you to go!"

"That's what he thinks," Sora said assuredly, stepping carefully over his erstwhile companion, the dead conductor.

"You know better?" Riku asked, looking back at the body with muted disquiet.

"We're on a train," Sora reminded him as they reached the door to the next car, "it's never _not_ going somewhere."

He opened the door, feeling a blast of dry, hot air, all too familiar by now, hit his face.

Xigbar was gaining on them, both guns out, his leather duster trailing behind him as he moved with a resolute purpose between the seats.

"Having second thoughts, kiddo?" Xigbar asked him with a smug smirk, "There are a dozen ways a train can kill ya, almost none of 'em are fast," he hefted up the gun in his right hand, twirling it deftly in the air and catching it as it were nothing, "and _zippo_ are painless."

"Sora," he heard Riku in his ear, urgently.

"I know," Sora replied, pushing against him as they both headed through the door and onto the narrow metal trellis connected this car to the next.

No sooner had they passed through the door were they nearly blasted back by a whoosh of fresh, cool air as, instantly as a light switch being flicked, the world appeared around them. Green hills, the brown, snowy slopes of the Rockies, in the distance, white houses with red tile roofs, dominated above by an ornate clock tower determinedly chiming the half hour, all of it lit in the light of the setting sun.

Twilight.

The force of the wind as they'd left the tunnel had been enough to push both Sora and Riku against the solid steel of the car. The quick grunt from behind them suggested Xigbar had been similarly unbalanced, hopefully right over the conductor.

"The door!" Riku called.

" _What?_ " Sora asked, shouting to be heard over the roar of the wind, the clattering of the wheels against the track to both sides of them.

Not bothering to explain, Riku slammed the door shut behind them, just in time for Xigbar to throw himself against it, leering at them through the window.

Maybe somewhat impulsively, Sora flipped him the bird through the glass, though this was deterred by Xigbar throwing his shoulder against the door, causing it to shake.

"What now?" asked Riku.

"You're asking me?"

"You got us this far."

"Yeah, 'cause he was gonna shoot me in the head! I'd like to see what _you_ come up with."

The door trembling again, Riku's grip on the handle slackening. He looked at Sora, who got the immediate feeling that he was actually being depended on here.

Weird. That kinda thing was usually limited to the football field. Tidus always got _so_ pissy when the guys looked at Sora for tips, for ideas on plays.

A play...this was all just a giant play. Maybe that's all life was.

Or maybe that was stupid, but Sora could at least think of _this_ particular situation as a play. That couldn't hurt.

"Okay..." Sora took a breath to collect himself, "See the walkway?"

Riku followed his gaze to the thin steel tread to the side of the car they'd just vacated, "Yeah?"

"You go left, I go right."

"You're insane."

"You _asked_!"

Xigbar threw himself against the door again, and the force was enough that Riku almost fell free of the train.

"Fine," Riku told him, "I'll go left."

Sora nodded, trying to swallow the knot of fear (it tasted surprisingly like only the hottest vomit) as he put one foot, then the other out onto the tread.

No sooner was his back pressed against the side of the train, barely half an inch between the tips of his nearly-ruined sneakers and the hissing, smoking metal to the edge of the track, passing rapidly just beneath him, did he hear the door give with a clang, heard a grunt that he knew was Xigbar.

 _Come on, come on_...

He took one step down the side, then another, his fingers scrambling for purchase on whatever they could find until he found the first skinny rung of the service ladder going up to the top of the car.

He'd never got around to telling Riku this part. Shit.

Gritting his teeth, Sora started up the ladder, his leg screaming in protest with every step. More than likely this would reopen his newly bandaged scars. At this rate, he'd probably succumb to shock from massive blood loss long before Xigbar got to use him for target practice.

He reached the top of the car, every inch of him burning with a mixture of incredible agony and something he recognized all too well as aggression.

The wind was even worse from up here, nearly blowing him back, had Sora not been gripping to the edge of the roof. Still, he was forced to look in front of him, at the steadily, but not steadily enough approaching rooftops of Twilight.

"Riku," he said again, just to keep him fresh, moving over to the left side of the car to where he knew that service ladder would be, "Riku, come on..." he reached down a hand.

"Much obliged, Sunshine," Xigbar said breezily, taking his other hand off the ladder to draw a gun from his duster, aiming it up at Sora...

"Look out!" and Sora was knocked aside, nearly sliding off the train, were it not for the single hand holding him by the arm.

"Where the _hell_ were you?" he asked Riku, unable to hide his relief.

"Climbing the train," he replied matter of factly, nodding back to the very rear of the car, "Like you said."

"Oh...right."

"Alright, alright," a smooth, too easy voice, "Break it up, you two."

Xigbar had climbed the rest of the way up, standing right center on top of the car, gun in each hand, as if it were nothing.

"Look, I appreciate the effort, really. Needed the extra cardio," he took slow, deliberate steps, swaying only slightly even against the constant movement of the train, "You don't really want to try the cat and mouse thing. There's only so much train, after all."

"Good point," Sora told him, "There is."

And he turned on his heel, running at breakneck pace up the length of the train car, leaping deftly to the next one, Riku at his heels.

"This is crazy!" he heard Riku panting in his ear.

"Yeah, I know!"

"Sora, the train's going too fast, if one of us stops to catch a breath, we'll just go flying over the side."

"Then make sure you've got a lot of breath!" Sora couldn't help but quip, at the same time being eternally grateful for Coach's insanely intense practice regimens.

They were going up an elevated stone bridge now, Sora saw, the one that spanned the north end of the lake. If there was time to squint, he may even be able to spot the Destiny Overlook way at the other end.

But of course there _was_ no time to squint, so he kept on, making the leap over to the next car and swaying a bit, stayed only by Riku's hand on the small of his back as he followed.

"What was that about having a lot of breath?" Riku asked.

"Oh, shut up," but he said it as thankfully as he could.

He could hear the thundering of Xigbar's boots on the sheet metal behind them. He wondered if anyone in the train beneath them, other conductors, maybe whatever few stray passenger, if any, were on board, could hear all this, and what they were thinking if they could.

"Almost out of train," Riku warned as they reached the second car to the front.

"Noted." Sora looked over his shoulder long enough to spot Xigbar gaining on them, looking disgustingly self-assured as usual.

"Don't know if you've noticed, fellas," he called over to them, leaping over to their car, "But this is the end of the line. And gravity's a harsh mistress."

"He's got a point," hissed Riku as they approached the last gap to the foremost car.

Sora could see the train bending ahead of them, as they approached a curve in the bridge, the last turn before the train made its final approach to Sunset Station.

"Riku," Sora said suddenly.

"What?"

"Remember the tunnel?"

"Which one?"

Sora fixed him with a look, "Let's fuck around."

And Riku's face cleared up, as if in understanding. Nodding, he took hold of Sora's arm and, side by side, they braced themselves as the train hit the curve, and threw themselves over the side, toward the slope of the hill beyond.

Sora heard a cry from Xigbar, another swear, the train whistle blaring in the distance, still completely oblivious.

Sora felt the ground rise up to meet him, felt the scratches and stings of thistles and brambles on every side, heard Riku groan and grunt alongside him.

But, staring up at the setting sun, feeling the air kiss his face, feel the world, living and breathing around him, Sora couldn't help but grin.

* * *

 **A/N:** Hope it was worth the wait! Thanks again, old readers and new, for sticking with Radiant Creatures as long as you have.

Like I mentioned at the top, I have several more chapters written and lined up, but I'm going to try and pace myself. Expect Chapter 14 within a week or two. Either way, update days will always be Friday.

Thanks, as ever!


	14. Mysteries of Love

Chapter 14, Mysteries of Love

 **A/N:** I made a deadline, someone call the Washington Post! Not much to add this chapter, it's back to four scenes, and it was really fun, and in spots, very difficult (but no less fun) to write. I hope you enjoy it!

* * *

Any delusion he may have had that the last hour, or two hours or, hell three days, had all been some crazy dream seemed to be roundly disproven by how every inch of his body was either screaming in protest or stubbornly refusing to react to anything.

He lay on his back, feeling the air, cool on his face, so different after the hot, dry, musty air of the Underworld. The ground beneath him was rough and bristly, coarse and overgrown. Stinging branches pricked into his arms, his face, but he wasn't sure he could move his hand to tend to them even if he tried.

 _Open your eyes...c'mon, you big prima donna, you're not_ dead, _and odds are you've got miles to go before you sleep, as usual._

But there was nothing done. Much as he tried, he couldn't. Or maybe he didn't _want_ to. Maybe he was just some spoiled entitled brat who couldn't get his ass in gear if it saved his life.

"Whoo!" a jubilant voice in close quarters, "Can you believe it? We really... _man_!" a buoyant, boyish laugh. Riku hadn't heard him laugh that way before, or at least, not since this whole debacle had begun.

It was such a ... _warm_ laugh, even innocent. As if none of this had happened, as if it all really _were_ some kind of dream.

But then, if it had been a dream, there'd be no reason for Sora to be anywhere near him now, would there?

"Riku?" he heard footsteps nearby, "Hey, Riku, you okay?"

"Ugh..." he groaned, forcing himself to open his eyes, looking up into Sora's big baby blues, currently cocked in an expression of mingled delight and curiosity, "...could be better."

"Could be better? Could be _dead_ ," Sora laughed, turning his head up toward the swirling purples, indigos and burgundies of the deepening night sky above them, "Like, for a second after we jumped off that thing, I actually _totally_ thought we were both screwed."

Riku looked over his shoulder, much as it pained him, at the bare stretch of track on the stone walkway above them. He knew, on the other side, it sloped down, a bridge overlooking Twilight. But it was quiet now, still. They were alone on the hillside, and may well have been alone in the whole world, for all intents and purposes.

"It was your plan," Riku told him, feeling his voice begin to come back, in fits and starts.

"Well, yeah..." Sora shrugged, an expression of put-upon modesty on his face, "Guess it was."

"No, Sora..." he nodded, "It _worked_. You got us out of there, you saved us."

Sora looked at him curiously, scratching at the back of his ear, mouth twitching in an uncertain smile, "Don't mention it. I guess I sort of owed you anyway, for you know...the motorcycle."

"Uh," he chuckled, "yeah, I guess, so...we're even?"

"We're even," Sora reached a hand down to help him up, "You know. For now."

Riku looked at the outstretched hand, then up to Sora who nodded a little impatiently for him to take it.

 _Well? Go on, you ninny_.

So Riku took his hand, letting Sora bring him to his feet. He wanted to say something, rather he _knew_ he _had_ to say something. Kairi, Sora, Maleficent, the Underworld, all of it...

And, though Kairi was still out there somewhere, didn't Riku still owe Sora an explanation? Well, that was the least he owed him.

"Uh, Sora..." he began, only to be roundly cut off.

"We'd better get moving," Sora was saying, "Before Pirate Surfer Hitman comes back looking for us."

"You think he will?" asked Riku, feeling quite stupid even for asking.

Sora gave him a look, "Well, you'd know, I guess. You're the one they all want to get their hands on. Frankly, I don't see what's so special..."

"Nah," Riku smiled despite himself, "I don't know either. I mean...I thought that...er...that Hades had been behind the whole thing so he could use me as leverage. With Maleficent."

"Maleficent..." Sora prompted, already walking through the weeds and brambles, limping a bit on his hurt leg, "She, like, your Mom or something?"

"Not really," Riku told her, "I mean...I never met my Mom."

"Oh..." Sora was quiet for some time, a look of contemplation on his face; it was with a great trepidation and, maybe something else, something deeper, that he at last said, "I'm sorry, man. That's...that's rough."

"Eh, I survived." Riku shrugged, watching as Sora stumbled on his hurt leg, nearly falling forward. Barely even thinking about it, he reached forward, wrapped an arm around his shoulder to keep him steady.

Sora looked up somewhat surprised, but grateful. He opened his mouth as if to thank him, but Riku wasn't sure he needed another of those, so he kept talking.

"That guy...Xigbar..."

"He was in the Coliseum," Sora explained, "Before the match. Gave me some hamfisted speech about how he hates hamfisted speeches."

"I can see that."

"Right?" Sora chuckled lightly, "The Captain...he's this crazy dude with a hook hand, he dresses like he's going to the Renaissance Fair..."

"Where do they _find_ these people?"

"...the Captain said he was a business associate. Or something. Maybe...er...maybe the Styx and Stones were just hired to get you, by whoever _his_ bosses are."

"Maybe," Riku reflected, "That would mean Maleficent lied."

"They do that a lot, don't they? Like...'adults'," he said the word with a childish affectation, as if to mock the notion, "They lie so we don't worry, or whatever B.S."

"Something tells me that's not why she lied."

"Oh." Sora was quiet for a while, "So, you're rich, right?"

"I mean..." Riku hesitated; he wasn't really used to this question. Axel had long ago learned to stop asking it, and the other Earthshakers made it a point to never bring it up to his face, not anymore.

"Maleficent keeps her eye on most of the money, but...yeah. Why?"

"Well, I was just wondering how much of a reward I could get for finding you. My Mom's probably been going out of her head, but I bet I can put a smile on her face with a new fridge, or something..."

But he was grinning, inviting him to share a joke, as if they'd been friends for years, as if he hadn't tried to pound Riku into a spot in the pavement not even a week ago.

"A new fridge?" Riku repeated, laughing unsteadily.

"Don't knock the simple stuff, Rich Boy. Us simple folk have to get our smiles wherever we can find them."

And, though it was quite obviously clear Sora was being funny, Riku could see what he meant. And that made him feel better and, in some ways, worse at the same time.

* * *

"This is unbelievable," Marluxia fretted, fingers fumbling over the switch of a cherry blossom embossed lighter, "I can't believe it."

"You oughta try _living_ it," drawled Axel, propping his head up on the arm of the sofa, "Want me to start from the beginning?"

"There's no need," he shook his head, trying the lighter a second time, a third, "Dammit."

"Let me," Larxene offered, leaning over the coffee table and lighting the thing in one deft motion.

"Ain't she something?" Axel nodded over to her with a grin, ignoring the icy glare she gave him in response.

"Ain't she indeed," Marluxia took one long, agonizing drag on his newly lit cigarette as Larxene lit one of her own.

Figuring this was about as cozy as their little domestic scene was gonna get, Axel asked, "Hey, so since we're all lighting up, mind if I..."

" _You may not._ " Marluxia all but spat the words, looking over at Larxene, "Please don't tell me he's been _smoking_ here."

"He hasn't," said Larxene, with a quick look over at him, "You haven't, right?"

"Well no, but I've been pretty damn tempted. You guys are smoking, what gives?"

"Luxia only smokes when he's stressed out."

"And, believe it or not, coming home to find a _wanted criminal_ in my pantry doesn't do a man's blood pressure any favors." he exhaled a plume of smoke, tipping ashes from his cigarette into a lotus patterned ash tray on the coffee table.

On his perch in the corner, the Dickface Formerly Known as Zazu let out a squawk of protest.

"I don't think he appreciates the fumes," Axel observed, "Can't be good for his health."

" _My_ health isn't doing so well, either," he groused, though Axel wasn't sure if he meant the smoking or just everything else, "And where do you get off lecturing me in my house?"

"Hey, man, not a lecture, just an observation..."

"Axel, for Christ's sake..." Larxene interjected, only to be overriden by a blaring clarion from the TV as the evening news returned with the story of the night.

"Welcome back to TTV Evening News," the newscaster's plaintive monotone reverberated through the living room for the third time since they'd all sat down here, "Our top story tonight, Chaos on the Sunset Line."

"Ah," Marluxia indicated the TV with a flourish, sweeping to his feet as he crossed to stand between the two opposing sofas, "How appropriate."

"The search is still on for three people believed to have jumped from the top of a moving train on route to Sunset Station this evening. Uncomfirmed reports identiy two of them as adolescent boys from Destiny, one of whom wanted for suspected kidnapping..."

The report cut to two images that Axel could only suppose were yearbook pictures. Riku looked characteristically exasperated in his, which made him smile despite himself.

"The identity of the third man, however, is..."

"Kidnapping," Marluxia huffed, switching off the TV, "Larxene, we are aiding and abetting a kidnapper."

" _Suspected_ kidnapper!" Axel interjected, "And I'm not wanted for kidnapping, I'm wanted for breaking the kidnapper out. Suspected kidnapper." he shrugged, "And like I already told you, he's innocent."

"That's immaterial," he turned mournfully to Larxene, "What were you _thinking_?"

Axel supposed he should know better than to expect some kind of sterling defense of his character, but he couldn't deny Larxene's cool, almost disaffected words stung a little.

"I didn't get a chance to think," Larxene said smoothly, "Demyx let him in."

"Oh, _Demyx_..." Marluxia moaned, "Knowing him, he's probably already told his beatnik friends, the kid's worse than a washerwoman."

"Hey," Axel warned, "Lay off Dem, alright? He hasn't told anybody."

 _But I am only back here to do him a favor, so maybe this_ is _kinda his fault_.

But it wouldn't do to think about that now. Somehow Axel wasn't sure Larxene would be too receptive to him criticizing her choice in boyfriends at this point in the game.

"Forgive me if I don't take your word for it," he crossed over to the wall near the little display of glass sculptures, "Larxene, I..." he bit his lip, as if turning his own words over in his mouth, "...I honestly thought we were past all this."

"Past all _what_?" and for the first time, the bite in Larxene's voice wasn't directed at Axel, not that he felt much better about it.

"Your little hideout, the motorcycles, the gang. You said you were done with all of it!"

"Aw, you got me. I was just about to get fitted for a leather duster. Are you _serious_?"

"I let you buy your Dugout back, no questions asked..."

" _Let_ me? I didn't need your permission, Luxia, it was _my_ money." she got up, crossing over to him, "That's not even the point, though, is it? You're acting like I threw out the red carpet for him, it's not like I had a _choice_!"

"Oh, come _on_ , Larxene, you know as well as I that no one can force you into anything."

And there, Axel believed he agreed with him. Larxene looked back at him, her eyes stormy, mouth set in a hard line.

Axel remembered the abandon with which they'd fallen on each other, the way he'd kissed her, her hands tangled in his hair. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing, and if she hated herself for thinking it.

"Look," Axel forced himself to speak, to defend himself, to defend Larxene, he wasn't really sure why, "I...I didn't mean to mess things up for you guys. Really. I was desperate, Rene..."

Marluxia fixed him with a glare so poisonous Axel actually flinched. He corrected himelf, "Larxene, she was...she was just trying to help me."

"Trying," Marluxia repeated, turning back to Larxene as if Axel had just vanished, "Well, regardless, he can't stay here."

"You can't be serious..." Larxene began.

"Larxene," Axel cut in, "He's right, I shouldn't be..."

"Whatever you should or shouldn't be," Larxene explained as if talking to some idiot kid (which, hell, maybe she was, Axel wouldn't mince words), "There is no way you're going anywhere tonight. There's cops all over town after what happened on the train."

Axel supposed that was a sound point. Whatever had happened to Riku and his nemesis-seemingly-turned partner in crime, it had caught the attention of very badge in Twilight. At least twice tonight he'd glimpsed the lights of idle cop cars passing outside the curtained windows.

"That's not our problem," Marluxia said it so offhandedly he may as well have been talking about his flower arrangements. Although Axel supposed he might feel more strongly about those in the first place.

"Luxia, you're smarter than that," Larxene crossed her arms, "It's better for all of us if Axel can get as far as he can as fast as he can."

Marluxia was quiet for some time, holding his cigarette at an angle adjacent to his face, like he was posing for some metrosexual photo spread in a gaudy fashion magazine.

Saix often had a way of looking like that too, Axel reflected, but with him it just seemed to be a thing he did. A part of him that he couldn't help, just like Axel couldn't help his red hair or his wolfish smile, or his indefatigable charisma and sex appeal.

On Marluxia, it seemed...forced. Fake. _He_ seemed fake. Demyx hadn't been exaggerating on that.

"Fine," he said at length, "One more night. Then you're on your own."

Axel really wished he had some zinger comeback to that one. Something like, ' _I can't ever be alone when I have memories of your girl riding me to Heaven and back all night,_ ' but Larxene would likely kill him for saying that, and he wasn't really in the mood.

"Thanks," he said instead, "really, thanks. It means..."

"Don't thank _me_ ," he crossed over to the coffee table and ground the cigarette out in the ashtray with a vicious finality.

And, without a single look at Axel or Larxene, he was up the stairs and out of sight. Zazu made another screeching noise, prompting Larxene to shut her eyes and grit her teeth, but nothing else.

"I owe you one," Axel told her, hands in his jacket pockets, "Come to think of it, I owe you five. Maybe six."

"Stop," she whirled on him, cigarette shaking between her fingers, "Just stop."

"Larxene..."

"Why did you come back?" she asked the question slowly, as if it itself was a condemnation.

Axel thought of Demyx, that impossible frown on his face, sadness that didn't belong there, not on him. Out of all of them, Dem at least should have been immune to things like guilt and shame and regret.

"Does he...do that a lot?"

" _What?_ "

"Does he...you know..." he shrugged, "Throw it in your face? The Dugout, the Earthshakers...me?"

"We're not talking about this, you're not gonna spin this so you can shit on Luxia and get off scot free."

"I'm not, I'm just asking..."

"He's worked very hard, Axel," Larxene told him, her voice measured, clutching the cigarette in a death grip, "To be where he is."

"Oh, yeah, I bet he got his start juggling coconuts for pennies at the pier."

"It's not funny."

"It's not. Rene..."

She lifted her free hand as if to rebuke him, snap at him, tell him not to call her that for the umpteenth time, but she said nothing.

"...you've worked hard too. From urchin princess of Twilight, to Earthshaker Warrior Queen, to Assistant Financial Senior Whatever..."

"I know where I came from, Axel, and I know where I am."

"Does he? Like, does he care? Because the way he said all that..."

"You broke into his house..."

"It's your house too!"

"...you're a wanted criminal..."

"...not like I _killed_ someone or something..."

"...and, point of fact, we used to date." she took a long drag on her cigarette, lifting her eyes heavenward, "Is is _any_ surprise he wasn't exactly cool with you sleeping over for the weekend?"

"He didn't have to talk shit about you, it's not your fault."

"Your chivalry warms my heart," she said dryly, "Spare me."

"I will if you will," he told her with a ghost of a smile.

There was a silence, the only sound Zazu flapping his wings restlessly. He probably didn't get to witness a lot of juicy domestic dispute from that Art Nouveau perch.

"I felt like I loved you," she said at last, not looking at him, "Once."

Axel stood in place, but he could feel his knee shaking with pent up energy, as if telling him to run, to quit it, to just hurry out as fast as he could while he still could.

But he was trapped here, he'd done that to himself. He couldn't fault Larxene for seeing it too, and seizing on it.

"I never told Luxia, obviously. We were kids, it didn't matter. It _doesn't_ matter. But it's still true...I _did_ love you. I thought I did. My best friend in the whole world, laughed at everything, never thought twice about anything, took shit from no one. The world could end, and he'd just stand there, hands on his hips and grin at it."

She sighed, "I really thought I loved you. Thought. Love is...different from that, it's harder, it's messier, and sometimes it just hurts," she smiled without humor, "You want guidelines on the mature lifestyle, start there."

"Larxene, I..." he struggled for words, feeling his breath short in his lungs, "...there was a lot of stuff I should've done differently back then. I...I know I never even apologized..."

"Well, don't start now." she turned to look at him, "It's getting late, and you'll want to be out of the house early in the morning."

She sank into an armchair, cigarette held aloft. Axel lingered there a moment longer, wanting to say something, to apologize, anything. But something told him it wouldn't matter.

Maybe it shouldn't.

He climbed the stairs, slowly, deliberately, fingers running down the cold metal of the railing. The stink of cigarette smoke was as strong on the second floor as it had been below, but there was another smell too.

Flowers. Flowers everywhere. He hadn't noticed it so much before now, but of course all the potted plants, hanging displays, even little pouches of potpourri all over the house cast a redolent, sickly sweet stench over the place. Almost suffocating.

"Sorry I'm late," he heard Marluxia's lazy voice from a partially opened door across from the main bedroom, where barely even 24 hours ago he and Larxene had been tangled together, "Takes some time getting used to being back home."

Phonecall, Axel supposed, hearing that grotesquely pompous ass chuckle of his, "Well, I'm here now."

Axel paused at the door, considered bursting in, raising hell, snatching the phone from Marluxia's hand, if only to prove he could. Throw the tantrum that he knew Larxene never would, show him that he wasn't some joke, prove that Larxene wasn't a joke either.

But that wasn't his place. Larxene would only hate him for it, even if it made Demyx feel better.

Demyx... Axel wondered how he was gonna explain this to the kid, his little errand to convince Larxene that she didn't need to be with this guy.

Axel couldn't say he'd been convinced otherwise. But maybe the problem was deeper than Demyx thought it was.

Or, maybe there couldn't be a problem, so long as Larxene didn't think there was?

Axel wished he knew, but if he did know anything about this stuff, he probably wouldn't be here in the first place.

He started up the narrow attic stairs, Marluxia's voice trailing after him the whole way, just as sure as all his flowers, and almost as pungent.

"Tomorrow should be fine, if you're quick about it. Yes, I am excited."

A pause, as Axel reached the attic, quiet and still in the dark.

"Larxene? No, I haven't told her yet," an easy laugh, "She took the promotion news well, though. I'm sure she'll warm up to this one right enough..."

Axel collapsed on the too narrow, too unsteady bed, hoping the discordant squeaking of the rusty metal posts got a rise out of Marluxia below.

He _did_ pause briefly, before going on with his call, so that was one thing.

"Long as she's happy, though, that's what matters."

"Your lips to God's ear," Axel said flatly, staring up at the sloping roof above.

* * *

It was with a resigned sigh that Selphie switched off the TV, setting the remote down with a well-affected lethargy next to the algebra homework they'd agreed to do one or four hours ago.

"Welp," she declared, "That's that, I guess."

"It can't be!" whined Zack, pressing both hands to his head.

"Pretty sure 'local mouse spooks local cat' is the threshold of hard news," Selphie told him, "I guess they don't know anything else."

"How the hell _can't_ they?" asked Tidus, speaking through a mouth full of pretzels, "Three people play frigging parkour on a train, and that's _it_?"

"Who do you think the third guy was?" asked Zack, "They didn't say anything about him."

"They don't even know for sure if it _was_ Sora and..." Selphie hesitated before saying the name, in case the very mention was still enough to make Tidus go all berserker, "Riku."

Tidus seemed too absorbed in snack food and grousing to take any umbrage, so she continued, "Maybe we got all excited for nothing."

"Aw, c'mon, two teenage boys? It's gotta be them."

"Yes, because pairs of teenage boys are such a rare commodity in these parts, more's the pity," Selphie favored both Tidus and Zack with a little smile, "I don't know why you're _hoping_ it's them anyway. Jumping off a train sounds pretty final."

"Someone being gone for three days is kinda final too," shrugged Zack, "I mean...in a different way, I guess, but..."

"Besides, he's Sora," said Tidus, "Dude survive a car crash, he can survive anything."

"It was _not_ a car crash, it barely dinged him."

"Which is why you cried your eyes out after it happened." but he winked, flashing one of his very Tidusy smiles at her, indicating he equated this with being romantic.

Selphie would have to get used to that. They still hadn't even gotten around to saying those special words to each other. The gender-prefix, friend-suffix words.

 _Well, duh, it's only been one day, and you've spent most of this one hungover, hanging around Zack, or lunching at a family restaurant._

Still, there was a weird kind of limbo to all of this. Like neither she nor Tidus really _knew_ what they were to each other, but they were gonna keep on being whatever that was.

"Sora's fine," Zack assured them, picking up the freshly emptied pretzel bowl and getting to his feet, "He's gotta be."

"Ooh, look at Nostradamus!" but Selphie wasn't going to deny his continued optimism was heartening.

"Uh-huh," Tidus nodded with a tired smile, "Yo, Notredameitch, got any Sprite in your book of prophecies, or..."

"We drink Orange Crush in this house," Zack said sternly, vanishing through the little doorway into the kitchen.

"Orange Crush?" Tidus asked, incredulous.

Selphie shrugged, "Maybe working a soda fountain all day breeds irregular habits."

"I thought we weren't gonna talk about Morty's?"

"No, we aren't gonna talk _trash_ about Morty's," Selphie pointed out, "Morty's pertaining to Zack, that is, we can still tear apart the dollar menu all we want."

"You can't just change the rules like that!" Tidus declared in exasperation.

"This is real life, not football. There are no rules, so buck-up, boyo," Selphie rolled her eyes, reaching for her open notebook, which had mercifully been spared the worst of the grease and crumbs of the evening.

"Not gonna lie," Tidus sighed, spreading his legs out in front of him in a uniquely _boy_ display of contentment, "Zack's kinda growing on me."

"See? I told you, if you just gave him a chance..."

"You can lay off the Afterschool Special song, Selph, I'm already converted."

She shrugged, "Wait till Sora sees us, all yakking it up like old pals. I hope he doesn't think we replaced him."

Tidus cocked an eyebrow, "Seriously? Sora doesn't _do_ jealous."

"You're right, that's more you,"

Tidus's grin flickered for the barest second, enough for Selphie to worry she'd perhaps made some stray remark without realizing it, but the flicker was just that, and he was smiling again before long.

"What do you think about him and...uh...him and Riku?"

"You're saying his name without punching the wall. Good on ya,"

"Like...if it _was_ them on the train..."

"Which we don't know for sure if it was."

"Well, yeah, but if it _was_...do you think they're, like, working together?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if they were trying to get away from the same thing, whatever it was."

Selphie considered, "A fire-forged alliance, huh?"

"I guess."

"Am I to take that as evidence you're drawing back the vendetta on our mystery biker?"

"Hell, no," Tidus said at once, "he kidnapped Kairi."

"So they say," Selphie shrugged, "I don't really know what to think. But if he and Sora are helping each other out, that must mean Sora's at least got reason to trust him."

Or it just meant he was really, really desperate, but that point ran counter to Selphie's own, so she let it die in committee.

"Trust..." Tidus echoed, "maybe."

"What were we saying about jealousy?" Selphie asked, bobbing her ankle up and down coquettishly.

"Aw, lay off, Selph," but the way he turned his head away from her suggested to Selphie that she was right.

 _Boys are weird. Someone alert the media_.

"Drinks on drinks on drinks on drinks!" Zack announced, returning with a bottle of Orange Crush and three plastic cups.

"Your Mom's a real sport," Selphie told him as he poured out a cup for her, "I'm lucky if I can smuggle Ginger Ale into the house without her having a vegan fit."

"She's cool with Apple Jacks, though?"

"Wakka's private tab," Selphie explained, surprised he'd remembered.

"Mom's usually too busy to care what I eat," Zack explained, sitting down next to her, "Long as I study, sleep and keep this place from getting too gross."

Selphie looked around the little apartment, at the neat bamboo plant on the dining room table, the tiny abstract paintings hanging here and there on the wall, the grand piano in the corner, covered over with a delicate white tablecloth, as if it hadn't been used in a very long time.

"Well, looks like your keeping up your end of the bargain."

"So she's out a lot?" asked Tidus, "Kinda sweet, you get the whole place to yourself."

"What's she do?" asked Selphie, giving Tidus a little look. After all, just because _he_ got off on the idea of absentee parents doesn't mean Zack didn't have a sore spot.

"Talks," Zack answered, stopping himself, "I mean...uh...lectures. She's a scientist, used to work at _X_ -Corp."

"Gran did say something about that," Selphie recalled, at the same time deciding not to comment that she'd assumed a touring physicist (or biologist, chemist, whatever the heck) would be able to afford a roomier place than this.

"And that's it?" asked Tidus lazily.

"It?"

"Your parents. Like, your Dad's dead, right?"

"Tidus!" Selphie snapped.

"What?"

But Zack didn't look bothered, actually laughing softly, "Uh...yeah, he is. Died when I was little. And hey," he added, "I don't mind you asking, really. People don't usually."

Selphie tried to ignore the very obvious smug look Tidus was giving her, "Does it ever get...lonely?" she asked, "You just hanging around here by yourself?"

Zack bit his lip, looking thoughtful, "I guess...sometimes. You kinda learn to get used to it. But I've got school, and practice...well, not anymore I guess..."

"Eh, there's always next year," said Tidus with an air of such forced casualness that Selphie reminded herself to compliment him on his restraint later.

"...and I've got you guys I mean, _friends_ ," he stopped, eyes wide as if he had spoken unspeakable curse, "Wow, that sounded really..."

Selphie opened her mouth to reassure him that no, that was certainly not as pathetic as it sounded or as Tidus's ill-suppressed guffaw (she'd have to revoke that compliment) made it out to be. But she was interrupted in this by a sudden sharp thudding from somewhere above them.

"You hear that?" she asked softly.

"Yeah..." Tidus looked at her, "Sounds like something fell."

"Or someone,"

"Nah," said Zack, "this is high as it gets, there's nothing upstairs."

"There's a _roof_ ," said Selphie, "And it's a month too early for Christmas."

Tidus rolled his eyes, "Something got you jumpy, Selph?"

"Oh, I dunno, Ti, something about nubile young women going missing all over the place has got my hackles rising. Ain't I silly?"

"Nubile, huh?" Tidus smirked, but the expression was wiped away as suddenly as it had appeared by a new, louder thud from above them.

"No, you're right," Zack said faintly, "that's something."

"Thank you," but she didn't really feel gratified as she said it.

They all sat there, side by side on the couch, staring at the ceiling like idiots until Selphie become convinced nothing was going to happen unless she made it so.

"Aren't we gonna do something about it?"

"Like what?" Tidus looked at her, "Selphie, it's probably nothing..."

"We just agree it is _not_ nothing!"

"None of our business," he clarified.

"I dunno," said Zack, "I mean, it's _my_ place, so I guess it's kinda my business. Like, by proximity, I guess."

He got up, shrugging into his letter jacket which, now Selphie looked closely, was at least half a size too big for him.

Tidus was still staunchly skeptical, "So what, you're gonna go up to the roof and..."

Another thud.

"Okay, it's getting kind of creepy now," said Selphie.

"Yeah, it was just weird before," Zack turned to her, "I mean...I'm still gonna go and check. Alone."

"Oh, you shouldn't go up there alone!" Selphie said, "There's a kidnapper on the loose."

"He's got it out for football players," said Tidus with a half laugh, though he'd by now gotten to his feet too.

"And nubile girls," said Selphie faintly.

"Maybe we should call the cops."

"And tell them what?" asked Tidus, "'Officer, there's a weird noise coming from my roof. Send a SWAT Team.'"

"There could be six guys with guns holding us up and the DPD wouldn't send a SWAT Team," Selphie crossed her arms, "Look, maybe we should just leave."

"Easy for you to say, I _live_ here."

"You can sleep over at my place, it's not like you haven't already."

To his credit, Zack still had time to blush and avert his eyes.

"Maybe we're all just overreacting," said Tidus, a little tremor sneaking into his voice.

Another noise, more like a clang than a thud. Selphie let out a yelp, grabbing onto Zack's shoulder in a panic. Zack, quite clearly caught off guard, stumbled backward with little dignity, falling right into Tidus, sending them all into a tangle of limbs on the floor with quite a decent thud.

"Huh," Selphie mused, "well we just gave the neighbors downstairs a fun ten minutes of panic."

"It's been ten minutes?" asked Zack.

"Aw, forget it," Tidus crawled out from under the both of them, "Obviously, we're all pretty on edge..."

"With good reason," Selphie felt compelled to point out, reaching a hand to help Zack up.

"...we're just freaking out over nothing. It's... _Jesus_!" he cried out, reeling back, his tanned face suddenly going pale.

Selphie followed his gaze and, before she could even process what she was looking at, screamed aloud, pressing both hands to her mouth.

"Oh my God," rasped Zack alongside her, staring at the figure looming on the fire escape, hand pressing against the window, sizing them all up through weary eyes, "Holy _shit_."

"What are you doing?" Selphie asked, her voice tiny, as he dashed forward to undo the window latch, "Zack!"

But he'd already opened the window, letting the watcher all but collapse through, right into Zack's thin, but apparently sufficiently strong arms.

He lifted his head briefly, and Selphie could see blue eyes looking from her to Tidus. His face was bloody, Selphie saw that now, cut up all over, with an ugly bruise just under his right eye.

"Zack..." Tidus began, looking over at him, "What..."

Zack shook his head and, when he spoke, his voice was choked up, "It's..." he smiled at them, and Selphie had never before seen a smile that was so sad, so scared, and so happy all at once, "He's my brother."

* * *

The ground had begun to slope downward more consistently, and by now the train tracks they'd been keeping steadfastly to their right, had faded from view.

"Think maybe..." Sora panted, looking up the too steep hill, "...maybe we should stop a bit."

"What?" Riku looked at him, incredulous, strands of his silver hair plastered to his forehead by sweat, "You can't be serious, we're almost..."

"We're not almost anywhere," Sora nodded over to the very distant outline of the Sunset Station, barely visible over the crest of the hill, "Looked hell of a lot closer from the train."

"We can't stop," Riku told him, "Or have you forgotten your buddy with the eyepatch?"

"If we're lucky, he hit his head on one of those traffic beams and he's the ICU's problem now," but Sora could tell Riku wasn't in the mood for jokes, "C'mon, it won't kill ya if we stop for just a..."

"Sora, we're _not_..." Riku attempted another step forward, a sharp shudder going through him, seeming to rock him from head to toe as he fell forward on one knee, his face contorted in a grimace.

"We're not what, now?" Sora asked, bending down beside him, "You okay? Where does it hurt?"

"It's not funny,"

"I'm not being funny, it's an honest question."

"Sora, I'm _fine_..." he moved one hand to a spot on his side and winced.

"You're hurt. You keep moving, it'll hurt worse."

"I can deal with it."

"What, by walking till it kills you?" Sora looked around, brow furrowed as he peered further down the slope, to make out a little outline in the darkness, a lopsided square jutting out from the weeds and stunted trees, "There we go!"

"What?"

Sora hauled him up to his feet by way of answer. Letting out another little groan, Riku struggled for purchase, his arm finally coming to rest on Sora's shoulder, in a neat reversal Sora couldn't say he was entirely pleased with, but figured would have to do.

"Over there," he pointed out, already leading Riku the rest of the way downhill toward the rundown shack, nearly overgrown with vines and brambles, "Tis a sign!"

" _Tis_?"

"Lighten up, won't you?" Sora peered through the tiny, mostly broken window into the darkness beyond, "Looks like an old tool shed."

"Who do you think it belongs to?"

"No one, now," Sora shrugged, nudging at the peeling, cracked wood of the door and nodding in approval as it swung inward with a laborious squeak of too rusty hinges, "Except for us chickens."

Inside the shed was dark and musty, dust motes hovering in midair, lit by moonlight through a sizable hole in the tin roof. Bits of the roof were scattered over the floor, on the workbench in the corner, the shelves lining the walls.

"We'd be better off outside," remarked Riku dryly.

"Aw, shut it, you big baby," Sora told him, "I thought bikers were supposed to be tough."

"Well, I've gotten this far. That counts for something," Riku attempted a smile, but groaned again, leaning forward.

"Sit down," Sora told him.

" _Where?_ "

"Hm..." Sora gave the shack a cursory glance before just sweeping his arm over the workbench, sending its assorted heaps of foul smell detritus toppling to the floor, "That'll do."

"What, you're gonna play doctor now?"

"You had your turn," Sora patted the bench, looking at Riku expectantly, "I won't even pull a knife on you, promise."

Riku rolled his eyes, but he heaved himself up onto the bench regardless. Sora nodded, seeing that it was good, and turned to the little steel supply cabinet on the wall, in which was stenciled, in now very faded lettering, ' _FIRST AID_ '.

"Place must've belonged to the park people," he commented, retrieving a still good roll of gauze bandages and a bottle of probably not as good peroxide, "Wonder why they left it to rot?"

"I've kinda had enough mysteries, Sora," Riku said flatly, leaning his head gingerly against the wall behind him.

"So have I, to be honest, I'm just trying to keep you talking so you don't die out of nowhere," he grinned, but on seeing Riku wasn't playing along, sighed, "Well, come on."

"Come on, what?"

"It's your side that hurts, right?" Sora mimed hitching up the side of his tee shirt.

"You want me to...take my shirt off?"

"Well, Jesus, I should've brought the Sexy Sax," Sora took off his own hoodie, tossing it into the corner with abandon, not even worrying about it landing amongst the grossness of the floor. He was pretty sure none of his clothes could get any grosser than they already were.

"Basic field first aid, I've done it loads of times."

"Are you...are you sure?"

"What, _you_ don't trust me?"

Riku sighed, seeming to concede that that was a reasonable point as he peeled his dirty gray shirt off over his head. His whole body was covered in a cold sweat, but Sora supposed his was no different. There were cuts up and down his arms, his back, but they were small, faded. Sora wondered where they were from, how he'd gotten them, but decided against asking.

There was a darker mark, fresher, on his right side. A raw, messy scrape.

Sora cleared his throat, trying not to betray any nervousness. Riku, however, didn't even seem that bothered by the sight of it.

"Look, Sora..." he began tentatively, "maybe you should just...go on."

"That's what I was gonna do, if you'd just let me..." he started forward.

"No. I mean...maybe you should just _go_. Get to town, get some help. I'll be fine."

"Will you?" Sora crossed his arms, dangling the roll of bandages loosely from his fingers.

"What's important is you let everyone know about what happened. I don't need a nurse."

"Good thing I'm not a nurse," Sora cocked his head to the side, "Look, the moment I ditch you is the moment some other goon with a weird scar or stupid haircut pops out of the shadows to snatch you off again, and then we're back to square one. No man left behind, not on my watch."

"Sora, you don't owe me anything..."

"I know," Sora told him, "But you owe everyone _else_ something. An explanation, for starters. That's not gonna happen if you get yourself kidnapped again."

Riku was quiet to that as Sora got down on one knee beside him, steeling himself.

"Musta gotten banged up coming off the train," Sora told him as easily as he could manage, which he was pretty sure was the point of bedside manner, "Nothing that can't be fixed."

"You so sure?"

"Well, I thought I was gonna lose my leg, like, two hours ago, but it's still attached..."

"Do I get a 'thank you' for that, or..."

"Hmph," Sora unrolled a stretch of bandage, daubing some peroxide on it, " _this_ is thank you."

He pressed the first section of gauze to the scrape. Riku hissed through gritted teeth, fingers tightening on the edge of the bench.

"You okay?" Sora asked.

"You're welcome," Riku said thinly, with the barest hint of a smile.

Sora couldn't help but smile back, continuing to delicately apply the bandages. Riku twitched whenever he touched him. Sora assumed it was reflexive. He seemed like one of those guys that didn't like being touched.

"Anyone ever told you coulda played football?" he asked at one point.

"You think so, huh?"

"Cornerback, at least. You've got the arms for it." he slapped Riku's bicep lightly.

"And what's that one do?"

"What, you don't know how to play football? Man, have you _lived_?"

Riku let out a little, self-conscious laugh, "I don't know, maybe I haven't. Was never my thing."

"What, living?"

"Football,"

"Well, never too late to learn,"

"What, you're gonna teach me?"

"Hey, I never said anything about _me_ ," Sora chuckled, thinking, "Remember when I punched you in the face?"

"Remember? It was just a few days ago."

"Was it? Feels like forever." he looked up at him with a sly smile, "How far we've come."

"Yeah..." Riku was quiet for a while, the tiny smile on his face getting fainter and fainter until it may as well have never existed.

"Sora, you're right."

"You'll have to be more specific, I'm right about a lot."

"I owe everyone an explanation," his voice was low, husky, "I owe _you_ an explanation."

Sora considered, "...Okay."

"I just..." he paused, "I guess I should've been preparing to say all this. I don't really know where to start."

"Well, while we're talking about that night at the party..." Sora trailed off.

"Kairi," Riku almost whispered the name, looking down at his lap. Sora was aware of his fingers shaking over the bandages.

"You were following her, I already know that. You didn't kidnap her, so..."

Riku nodded, "I _was_ following her. Pretty sure she tried really hard to pretend I wasn't, to ignore me."

"Sounds like her. She hates making waves."

"And...that night, after I beat you up..."

"Hey, we beat each _other_ up."

Riku made this little coughing sound that may have been a laugh, "Fair point. I went to the Overlook. I...I needed some time to myself, to think. She followed me."

Sora had expected this, but to hear Riku say it made him freeze up all the same. He didn't say anything, even though it felt like ages before Riku spoke again.

"She was pretty pissed. I mean, not that I blame her. I'd be pissed too. She wanted to know what was going on, why I was following her, what I wanted. And she..." he sighed, "she said she had a feeling it wasn't because of her."

"It wasn't?" Sora asked faintly.

Riku shook his head, saying in a voice so quiet Sora could barely hear it, "She's smart, Sora. She...notices things about people. It kinda scared me. Maybe I deserved to be scared, I don't know."

He looked up at Sora, those feline green eyes of his looking, for the first time since Sora had known him, not at all clever, not at all sly. But weak, vulnerable. Human.

"I wasn't following Kairi to get to her, Sora. I was following her to get to you."

Sora blinked, feeling a weird little skipping in his heart that he couldn't understand, forcing him to realize how fast it had been beating this whole time.

"W-what? I don't..."

Riku closed his eyes, "Oh God..." he breathed, his shoulders shaking with some pent up anger, sadness. Whatever it was, he stabbed it down before it could reveal itself.

"Tag," he said at last,"There was...there was a game of tag. Destiny Town limits, by the tunnel. You and your friends, you were playing together."

The tunnel...the battlefield of his childhood. They'd played so many games back then. Pretend, hide and seek...and yes, tag too, lots of it. Sora had been a force to be reckoned with, long before he'd ever thought twice of being a running back.

" _You're it_!" he could remember crowing, thudding a pouting Tidus on the side of the head, halfway down the tunnel.

" _No fair._ " but Tidus would always grin, gap-toothed at him, " _You can't win playing against the_ wind _,_ "

The nickname had stuck.

Riku was still talking, "Must've been seven, eight years old. There was this...this kid sitting off to the side, where the tunnel opened up. Purple bandanna over his hair, even though it must've been _the_ hottest day of the summer..."

He smiled, even as his voice grew fainter, more pained, "Kid probably coulda sat there all day, not saying anything, not doing anything, and no one giving him the time of day... But then _you_ come up to him, and you say..."

" _Hey, Doorag!_ " the words came back to Sora, as if emerging from some years' long fog, " _Wanna join up?_ "

He looked up at Riku. There was a tiny, tortured smile on his face.

"You came over to me and...and you gave me your hand." he closed his eyes again, "And you let me play."

"You weren't very good," Sora said faintly.

"I know I wasn't."

"You never told me your name."

"You never asked me for it."

They looked at each other for some time. Sora trying, desperately now, to recall memories of that one summer afternoon, ten years ago.

"I don't get it...if we'd met before, back when we were kids...why the hell didn't you just _say_ that? And what does Kairi have to...?"

"When..." he spoke slowly, as if loathing every word as it came through his lips, "...when I was younger, I...I didn't really have a lot of friends. Any friends. I wasn't good at...at talking or playing with other kids, or any of that."

Sora was about to tell him that that still didn't explain anything, but Riku kept on, "But you...Sora, you were _good_ at it. You didn't even have to try. Always smiling, always laughing...everyone's friend, and the only person who _ever_ looked at me twice, even for one day, one stupid game of tag. And I know it was stupid of me, but after that it felt like you were my friend."

"Well..." Sora paused, "maybe we _could_ have been."

Riku flinched, as if that very suggestion had stung him somehow.

"If you'd just come up to me again. At least told me who you were."

"I wanted to, but..." he shook his head, like even he couldn't understand it, "I couldn't. Scared, I guess. But...no matter how much time passed, I couldn't forget that day. The first time I ever felt like I _belonged_ someplace. That I wasn't just some...relic in a case, or some kinda pet. Not even joining the Earthshakers..."

He leaned forward, but stopped just as quickly, letting out another short moan of pain. Sora had only managed to bandage half the scrape.

"I tried to forget about it, really, I tried, but it never went away. That memory, how it felt. And then I blink one day and I'm 18 years old, only one person in the world who gives a shit about me, no idea what I want to do with my life, and a motorcycle that's just about the only thing I understand."

His voice broke, as if the very mention of his abandoned bike had shaken him.

"And then I realized you were still here. While I was stuck in my head, trying to grow up, trying to figure out _how_ , you were still _you_. Smiling, happy, everyone's friend. And now you had Kairi. It was just...just really surreal, I guess. Realizing how much had happened. So I watched her, just so I could see what it was like."

Sora looked at him, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. He felt almost afraid to ask, but the whole world seemed to have stopped around them, holding itself hostage until he did.

"See what what was like?"

Riku closed his eyes again, pressing his lips shut as if he'd been dreading having to say anything. He opened his eyes.

"Having somebody. Being _loved_ by some..." he paused, "By you."

Everything was quiet. Riku's shoulders seemed to give way, as if he'd just come free from under some tremendous weight, his body shaking with a deep, broken breath.

Sora got to his feet, nearly staggering back, even as Riku slumped over, crying out in pain.

"You..." Sora found himself struggling for words, "you're..."

He couldn't stop looking at Riku, sitting there on the bench, hands clutching his hurt side. Sweat-matted hair clinging to his forehead, whole body shaking with cold or with adrenaline or both.

"I wasn't going to tell you," he breathed, "Not like this."

"You're...you're _gay_?" the word sounded weird on his lips, like some little spoken swear. He wasn't sure what to say, what to do, but his mouth formed a word anyway, " _How_?"

"I kinda wish I knew the answer to that one myself, to be honest," he said with a tiny trace of humor.

Sora's mind was reeling, images flashing through his head at a breakneck speed.

Riku, standing in the street, looking not at Kairi, but at him, laughing at the handlebars of his bike as they raced through the tunnel, wind in their hair, Sora's arms grasped loosely around his waist. Riku riding out of the darkness, into the chaos, and giving him his hand to go with him.

"This whole time..." Sora said at last, "everything since Kairi was taken...all because of some _crush_?"

"It...it wasn't..." he panted, his voice, usually so smooth, so calm regardless of the circumstance, sounding weak, fractured and ashamed, "It wasn't a crush, Sora..."

"What, then?" Sora prompted, feeling dizzy, sick, " _love_?" he rasped out the words, "I invited you for a game of tag when we were _kids_ and that was it?"

"I...I wish I could describe it, Sora, don't you think if I could I _would_?"

"You don't even _know_ me, I don't even know you. You can't just build some fantasy up around somebody because you're...because you're alone. And you sure as hell can't expect it to come _true_."

"You think Kairi didn't tell me that?" Riku asked, "Sora..."

" _Don't_ ," he pressed a hand to his mouth, realizing with a shock how clammy it was, "Just...don't say my name."

"I don't expect anything. I never did, I'm not that stupid."

"No," said Sora, "not stupid. Just sad and alone, right? And I'm...I'm _not_ sad and alone, so naturally it's love at first sight."

"I'm sorry," Riku panted, kneeling there on the dirty floor, one hand pressed to his hurt side, the other one on the floor in front of him, inches from Sora's foot. He looked up at him, as if begging, hoarse and wheezy like an old man, or a sick one.

"I'm _so_ sorry."

Sora looked at him, prostrate on the ground like that, and remembered, fully, maybe for the first time in a decade, a lanky kid with bright green eyes, hair hidden under a violet bandanna. Tall for his age, but he seemed tiny somehow, with a solemn face, a face that saw, that heard, but didn't say anything.

" _I'm Sora_ ," he really _hadn't_ asked his name, had he? Just reached down with one hand and helped him up, invited him to the game.

And the kid had smiled, a real smile, not the shrewd, knowing smirk, not an exasperated grimace, but an actual smile. A kid's smile. Maybe the first one he'd ever had, and the last.

"Get up," he told Riku, "You'll just hurt yourself worse."

Riku looked up at him, searching. He moved to one knee, let out another gasp of pain, made as if to fall.

 _Help him,_ said some little voice, weirdly like Kairi's, in the back of his head, _What's wrong with you? He's hurt. Do something for him_.

And Sora almost did, almost reached forward as if to take Riku's hand, help him up again, give him another ten years of memories, of fantasies, of imagined...what? Embraces, glances, tender kisses? How many times had Riku sat up awake at night, imagining himself in Kairi's place?

And how had Kairi seen it where Sora hadn't?

He turned away, and started for the outside.

"Sora!" he heard Riku call after him, "Sora, wait!"

He wouldn't follow him, Sora thought. He hated himself too much. Maybe he was right before, maybe he _did_ deserve it.

Sora's own head was pounding, his eyes stinging for reasons he couldn't comprehend. He wanted to scream, to cry, to punch something.

Dry leaves and trampled weeds crunched under his feet as he continued down slope, the fresh scent of the lake blowing to him on the evening wind.

The words kept echoing in his head, some ceaseless mantra, some condemnation, " _Being loved by someone. By you._ "

Loved... Riku knew about Sora and Kairi, but he'd done what he did anyway, and now...

 _And now?_ That Kairi-ish voice again, _It's not his fault. We can't pick who we love_.

"Easy for you to say," Sora whispered, coming to rest against a stunted birch tree on the last, low ridge before the hill met the lake.

"Sora!" his voice again, echoing through the night to him.

 _Go away_ , he thought, as if thinking would do anything, _Go away, just_ go _. You've done enough_.

He remembered the Coliseum again, the roar of the bike's engine, the startling blur of its headlight around the edge of the ring. Sora telling him to leave, and Riku's answer.

" _Not without you_."

He'd offered his hand. Sora had taken it. Maybe he'd be dead otherwise.

 _Maybe? We've been over this. You're not as tough as you think, and twice as full of yourself_.

He didn't feel full of himself though. He didn't really know what he was feeling, and that only made it worse.

"Sora!" another cry, "Sora... _argh_!"

He felt his shoulders tense, turning over his shoulder despite himself. There was another moan, ragged and pained, tinged with desperation. And, following it, something else, like a crack, a grunt, not Riku's.

There was someone else.

Sora felt every bone in his body go rigid, a fear he'd only very recently put to bed waking up again.

"Sora!" Why did he sound so close? Sora scanned the trees, the brush around him, but saw nothing, "Run! Get help..."

Another thud, another moan. Sora let go of the elm, already shaking, from fear or adrenaline or both he didn't know.

Get help... He should get help. Maybe Xigbar had caught up to them at last. Whatever else Riku was, he didn't deserve this, Sora could believe that, right?

 _Get help. Come on, what're you waiting for? Can't you hear him, he's in trouble?_

But that's just it. Sora could hear Riku.

 _Just goes to show he doesn't know a thing about me_ , he told himself, already running toward the sound of the struggle, feeling his blood pumping in his ears, anger pounding like a drum in his veins, _Get help? I run where the battle's thickest_.

He scrambled up the hill, nearly tripping more than once, until he could glimpse the shed just over the next ridge.

"Riku?" he called out, "Riku!"

The door was hanging open, creaking back and forth in the wind. Sora spotted a thin piece of white fabric, stained red in spots, lying in the doorway. One of the bandages.

His heart in his mouth, Sora bent to pick it up, holding it gingerly between two fingers.

He felt his mouth go dry, in almost the very same instance as something hard and solid struck him in the back of the head, sending him face first to the floor.

"S'what you get," boomed a gruff, leery voice, the only thing in the world as everything else began to rapidly fade to black before Sora's partially opened eyes, "breakin' a young kid's heart like that."

 _What was that about going where the battle's thickest?_ But Sora couldn't tell if that voice was Kairi's, his Mom's or Riku's.

No matter who it was, he didn't have time to tell them to shut up before he blacked out yet again.

What's more, he wasn't sure if he wanted to.

* * *

 **A/N:** Hope you enjoyed it! I've been working toward that last scene since the beginning...it was another of those little thoughts that inspired the whole thing. Expect chapter 15 two Fridays from now.

Until then!


	15. Missing Persons

Chapter 15, Missing Persons

 **A/N** : Happy update day! And thanks to those of you who've left a kudos or a bookmark these past few weeks. Means an awful lot.

The next several chapters will have a slightly different format. Obviously, we've been moving in linear time for much of the story, telling the events of what has basically been a week in Radiant County. Chapters 9 and 10 both took place on Saturday evening, the former from the point of view of characters in Twilight and Traverse and the latter from the POVs of characters in the Underworld. They technically happened in the same timeframe, just in different places.

Chapters 15 through 20 will follow similar logic as we move into Monday, a week since the story began. Each pair of chapters will tell the events of a specific part of the day, from the perspectives of two sets of characters in different places.

So, Chapters 15 and 16 will both chronicle Monday morning, more or less overlapping. I point this out for the sake of clarity, and also because this means a slight change in future update days. You'll have a week to wait for Chapter 16, then two for 17, one for 18, then two again for 19.

I figure it's neater that way.

Hope you enjoy!

* * *

Saix wasn't entirely sure _how_ every woman in their local law enforcement was able to stay 'on' at every minute of every day, but he wasn't going to deny he was a little jealous.

"Rookie, huh?" the detective scrutinized him over the rim of her Twilight PD coffee mug which, believe it or not, she'd barely touched, "I remember what that's like. Yuffie does too," she looked slyly across the office to where Yuffie was leaning against a file cabinet, going to town (daintily, of course) on a cruller from the fancy bakery down the street which, if Saix remembered correctly, had not too long ago been a shady check cashing place.

"Oh, no fair!" Yuffie protested, her mouth full, "It is _too_ , too early for this story."

"She's just saying that because it makes her look bad." she winked at Saix who, at a loss, produced a fairly pathetic chuckle.

"Back at Academy, Yuffie thought it would just be _super_ cool if all us Rookies got on the squad bikes and raced around campus."

"Like you didn't have fun."

"I almost _died_!"

"And you would've had fun doing it." Yuffie jerked a thumb over her way, looking over at Saix, "Don't let her fool you, Tifa's crazier than I am."

"I don't know," said Saix, looking over at Yuffie, "You _raced_?"

"I told you, I like bikes." Yuffie shrugged, "I once told my Dad that if he didn't let me do the cop thing, I'd just join one of the leather jacket gangs. Almost called an ambulance."

"You're insane," Tifa turned to Saix, "She's insane. Isn't she?"

Saix shrugged, "I kinda did the same thing, tell you the truth. Except, well...I kinda already _was_ in a leather jacket gang, so..."

"Oh, yeah, you're the Earthshaken," Tifa giggled, "Geddit? Earthshaker, but you quit, so now it's..." she sighed, "past tense."

"Very clever."

"You're just saying that."

"Very smart too." Saix smiled, despite himself.

Nodding in approval, Tifa put her mug aside, "Well, I guess we'd better get down to business."

"Please," Yuffie crossed over to sit on the edge of the desk. Tifa gave her a questioning look, to which Yuffie smiled pleasantly, shaking some last crumbs from her cruller down to the desktop.

"You two are in for more than you bargained for," Tifa began, retrieving a neatly pressed folder from one of the desk drawers, neatly labeled ' _Sunset Line_ ' in purple cursive.

"It's my curse," said Yuffie, "Everything gets exponentially more interesting wherever I come around."

"No I.D on those two boys?" asked Saix, in a measured attempt to prevent another fit of school tales and giggles.

"I.D? You make it sound like they're dead."

"Well, have you _found_ them?"

Tifa shrugged, "If we had you would have heard halfway through the door. Department's champing at the bits to get some explanation out."

"And you're _sure_ it's them? Sora and Riku."

"Our boys," chirped in Yuffie, "In a manner of speaking."

"We're not sure of anything, it's not like there weren't any witnesses closer than half a mile off. You know who I blame?"

"The media?"

"The _brass_ ," she jerked her head out the frosted glass panel of the door, "Harvey's got a bug up his butt about this thing. He just _had_ to make it sound like we were onto something..."

"Oh, Ratcliff's the same," Yuffie flicked her wrist dismissively, "You're just lucky _your_ boss doesn't stink like cigars and corn chips all the time."

"Well, maybe he's not that far off," said Saix, "How many missing teenagers can there be at a time? _And_ they were coming from the train tunnels," he looked at Yuffie, "Underground."

"Little pet theory I worked up," said Yuffie with no amount of modesty, "Styx and Stones backing the kidnappers. At least the Destiny Boys."

"That's what we're calling them now?" asked Saix.

"I don't know, I just tried it out and it sounds all adventurous and sexy. Whaddaya think, Tifa? Should I write for the scandal sheets?"

"Don't quit your dayjob, Princess."

"Princess?" Saix asked.

"Long story." Tifa considered for a while, opening the folder to reveal neat copies of Riku's arrest report, no doubt faxed in from the DPD, "Speaking of our local subterranean dystopia, you guys hear anything from Lionheart?"

"Leonhart," Saix corrected.

Tifa gave him a wry look, "Whatever he's calling himself now."

"Go easy on him," said Yuffie, though Saix could tell her smile had become a little fixed, "And no."

"Ratcliff doesn't want to take any action on it, even after this thing on the Sunset Line," Saix indicated the file, not even bothering to hide the note of frustration that crept, unbidden, into his words, "Says it might put Squall in danger."

"Can't say I disagree with him there," Tifa leaned back in her seat, "'Sides, he can take care of himself."

" _Anyway_ ," said Yuffie, "let's just suppose for a second that we don't really have any leads on what happened on the train...which we don't."

"Ah yes," Tifa nodded, "the errand that brought you to my humble hole in the wall."

"Axel," Saix could feel his throat constrict even as he said the name, "Presuming he's still here."

"Presuming he _came_ here in the first place," said Tifa.

"He definitely did, he has nowhere else."

"Well, if you're so sure..." Tifa shrugged, "he _must_ be here, must he?"

Saix opened his mouth to retort, but seeing how primly Tifa was sitting, as if she knew very well she'd gotten the better of him, convinced him to shut up.

He wasn't sure if he had upset her, or if Yuffie had, or if she was just like this all the time, but it made him nervous all the same. Yuffie could do that too...Axel had done it all the time.

Some people were just 'on' all the time, and...much as Saix tried, he'd never quite figured out the secret. It was alienating, sometimes, which was probably why he found himself missing Squall more and more by the day.

"Axel and Saix were in the Earthshakers together," Yuffie explained, maybe sensing that Saix had spaced out, "They even relocated at the same time, isn't that right, Saix?"

He nodded, "We joined up at the same time. 16 years old, I think."

The raw burn of the ink on his wrist, the pale blue crescent moon, almost glowing against his too white skin.

" _Day and night_ ," Axel's familiar, lazy drawl, holding his own wrist up for inspection, the orange sunburst, " _Different as can be, but you can't take 'em apart either._ "

And Saix's reply, thinking he was so clever, " _No matter how hard you try_."

Their wrists had touched, and Saix had realized, even then, that Axel was _warmer_ than him too, and not just his personality. But whether that meant something was wrong with him, or with his friend, he'd never been sure.

"Why move to Destiny?" asked Tifa, "It sure as hell couldn't be for fear of the boys in blue. And I say that as one of them."

"Why does anybody move anywhere?" Saix shrugged, "Wanted a clean start."

"You must've wanted an even cleaner start, joining up with DPD."

"Axel...wanted different things than I did," he said it slowly, painstakingly, if only so Tifa wouldn't need to ask again, "We lost touch."

"And yet here you are, looking for him again."

"Is this an interrogation?" Saix asked coolly, "I would've hired an attorney."

Tifa raised her eyebrows, "Not an interrogation. Just curious."

She didn't take her eyes off him, "He doesn't have any family."

"He does not."

 _But he did,_ he found himself thinking, wildly, suddenly, quailing under Tifa's scrutiny, _he did have a family. Three of them, all living together in a run down flower shop off the waterfront. The happiest damn time in your life_.

"Yuffie said something about a girl."

"Woman," Saix amended, recalling a tangled mess of blond hair, hazel eyes, a teal scarf wrapped around the waist like some champion's belt, "They dated for a while, when we were all in the Earthshakers."

"I tracked her down," Tifa retrieved another, much thinner, folder from the desk. Saix glimpsed a tiny, square photo. The woman depicted was stern, hard-faced, unsmiling, but every bit Larxene.

"Workplace record," said Tifa, by way of explanation, "Runs numbers for _X_ -Corp."

"The biotech guys?" asked Yuffie, incredulous.

"Weird, right? Who said the streets are a dead end to human progress?" Tifa winked at him, but whether she was being friendly or taking a jab Saix couldn't be sure.

"She must make pretty good money. Lives in the Market District."

Saix tried to imagine Larxene, wild, rebellious, half-insane Larxene, living in one of those cushy row houses west of the train tracks, much less working for the biggest corporation in the county area. Then again, he lived in a loft apartment in uptown Destiny that, give or take reliable phone service and consistent running water, was still way above the means of a biker hoodlum from the waterfront.

"Alone?" Saix asked, expecting one answer but getting another.

"Shares the house with a coworker. Mar something."

"Sounds exotic," smiled Yuffie.

"Looks exoticer," Tifa held up a second company headshot, "Pink is the new orange, or didn't you hear?"

"Jesus," Saix couldn't help but mutter. Tifa wrinkled up her nose at him, "Besides that, one dependent...a younger brother."

"Demyx," Saix said at once, "Figured he'd be hanging onto her coattails for the rest of his life."

"That's the impression I got too," Tifa set the folder aside, "It's not much of a lead, but it's what we've got."

"It's enough," said Saix, "Trust me."

Tifa looked him up and down, as if in appraisal, "Maybe I will." she set the folder down with a satisfied plop, sweeping to her feet in the same motion, "Just gimme a second to get the district judge on the horn. I knit him a wool muffler for his birthday, so I think we can expect a search warrant before lunch."

"You knit?" asked Yuffie, mouth splitting into a grin.

"You don't? Pick up your crumbs, Princess."

"Later, Boobs," Yuffie waved her off as she swept out of the office.

"Boobs?" Saix asked her, "Let me guess."

"Long story," he and Yuffie said in almost the same breath.

"She's kind of a piece of work, isn't she?" he prompted with due caution.

"Yeah, she takes some getting used to. Don't hold it against her, though, she's been through it." she looked at him, her lips quirking in a tiny, almost invisible smile, "We all have."

"Kinda reminds me of Squall."

Yuffie laughed, "I'm sure she'd _love_ to hear that."

"Well, not...personality, or anything. But she really jumped on the whole biker thing, didn't she?"

"Like I said," she sighed, "We've all got our pasts." she clapped him on the arm, leaping clear of the desk with a dancerly grace, "C'mon, I stay any longer in this box, I might go nuts."

"Right behind you," Saix told her, not moving to get up. But she had the grace to leave the office anyway.

Alone, he leaned his head back in his chair, closing his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, his attention fell at once on the still scattered documents from Tifa's folder. Larxene's picture, her mysteriously pink male friend...Axel's mugshot.

He was smiling, Saix realized. Somehow he hadn't noticed before, maybe too busy trying not to look too long at it, like it was the sun or something. But he was smirking, cocky, self-assured, absolutely over everything and everyone.

" _Come on, Moonboy,_ " sixteen years old, his hair not as long as it was now, but even wilder for all that, his lanky arms straddling the handlebars on a secondhand motorcycle as if it was the most beautiful thing in the world, " _You only live once_."

" _And if you start riding around on that thing you'll learn that soon enough, to your sorrow._ "

" _Don't be such a prima donna_ ," that grin, his eyes alight with mischief and a weird, almost childlike joy, " _C'mon, you've_ got _to get one._ "

" _And why's that?_ "

" _Because, you dip, I am not about to conquer the roads of this town all alone._ "

" _What, you need some idiot to make you look good?_ "

And Axel had laughed, " _No, I need a boy genius at my side so that my idiotness is less obvious._ "

" _Idiocy_ ," Saix had corrected.

" _That's what I'm talking about_!" Axel had thudded him lightly on the back of the head, teeth flashing in the afternoon sun, " _See? I can't get by without you_."

Saix really missed believing that. He missed it more than he'd ever thought he could.

* * *

The house was still and quiet, shadows stretching out impossibly long distances across the hallway walls, down the stairs. Axel saw his own shadow appear suddenly, dominating the wall across the living room as he descended the stairs, only to just as quickly shrink as he reached the bottom.

Deep. Maybe. Or maybe he was too tired.

Zazu was perched in his cage, head tucked down beneath the fold of one wing. Axel wasn't sure if birds could snore, but Dickface wasn't letting that stop him, swelling and shrinking with uneven, wheezy breaths.

There was a little heap of spent cigarettes in the lotus blossom ashtray, much more than there'd been when he went up last night. Axel guessed Larxene must have been up for a while.

He wished he could have said goodbye to her, to apologize again for wrecking things in perhaps an even more spectacular way than he had last time. But he knew she wouldn't listen to him, she wouldn't accept it. And she shouldn't have to, Axel saw that now.

Hard as it may be for him to grow up, he at least realized that.

With a little peek out the window, he surmised the squad car that had been parked at the corner last night was no longer there. He wondered what that meant for that high speed chase on the Sunset Line. If Riku...if it _was_ Riku...was okay.

 _You should find out. You owe him._

But maybe if he owed Riku anything, it was to stay as far from him as he could. As far from anyone.

With a deep sigh, Axel gave the empty living room one last wave, feeling inexplicably sad, as if this was _his_ house he was turning his back on, never to see again, and slipped out the door.

The sky was just beginning to turn pale purple and blue with the light of dawn which, in these parts, was obviously not near as impressive as the light of twilight. The sun seemed far off in the morning, most of the town, its bright roofs and gables, its cobblestone walkways, shrouded in darkness even as the horizon to the east got steadily brighter and brighter.

It was cold too, an autumn chill that seemed to burn Axel's face, his hands as he walked through Marluxia's infuriatingly perfect garden.

"Shouldn't you all be dead?" he found himself addressing a big bushel of crimson marigolds beneath the living room windows.

Marluxia's car was in the driveway, next to Larxene's. A silver convertible with a dusting of smoky gray around the edges. Axel supposed he should be impressed at Marluxia's restraint, not making it pink.

Sighing, he lifted his hood up to obscure his hair, and started down the street. He had a ways to go before the Dugout and, at last, his stupid borrowed bike.

He missed his 'Vette. What's more, he missed his _real_ bike. He missed Riku too, he realized as he crossed the lonely, early morning streets, head down, hands in his pockets.

He missed Riku's dry exasperation, that long suffering patience with which he'd roll his eyes at one of his jokes, or tell him to stop being so full of himself. He missed having someone tired with him, but not so tired that he didn't want to cut him loose.

And, hell, he'd miss Twilight too. Sure he'd only been back one weekend, and it hadn't been in the sunniest circumstances, but here, even for just a few days, he'd almost felt like a kid again.

Almost.

And he'd miss Larxene, even if she never missed him again, even if she took that memory of their night together in the Dugout and ripped it to shreds...he'd still remember it, and he'd still wish he could have done more for her, been less stupid, made up to her for everything.

Demyx too, he reflected, taking the Waterfront steps two at a time. He'd miss the goofy twerp, his easygoing stride, his shitty soap opera, his uncanny way of knowing a _hell_ of a lot about people while not seeming to know he knew.

He felt bad that he couldn't keep his promise, that he couldn't convince Larxene she didn't need Marluxia. But maybe it wasn't his place, maybe that was up to her. After all, where the hell did _he_ get off telling people who they should or shouldn't be together with?

But Demyx meant well, he always meant well, that's what was so good about him. Any agenda the kid had it was to make himself feel good, and other people to.

 _Must be something. 19 years old and you still believe you can fix the world with music and good vibes_.

Good vibrations... Axel couldn't help but chuckle. Maybe he _had_ been an influence on Dem after all. There, something to be proud of.

He heard music as he made the final approach down the narrow walkway to the Dugout. The crackles and pops of the cassette player, the familiar strumming of a sitar, an impossibly happy, inexplicably young voice singing along.

"' _You...what did you do? That's makin' it so hard to keep it cool_..'." a muffled chuckling noise, " _Could you stop laughing? It's distracting_."

" _I can't help it._ " Axel thought he recognized the voice that answered him, " _It's just_ so _corny_."

" _One man's corny is another man's cool_ ," Dem pointed out, " _And speaking of..._ "

Axel considered stopping inside the Dugout, interrupting whatever flashback session this was, if only to say goodbye to the one person here who _didn't_ have sufficient cause to want him the hell gone.

His bike wasn't propped up against the lamppost where he'd left it. It was lying, as if tipped onto its side, on the pavement beside. Frowning in consternation, Axel hurried the last few steps over to it.

 _Piece of junk, the wind probably blew the wrong way and the suspension gave out_.

But no sooner had he bent down to get a better look did Axel realize that wasn't the problem. The suspension was off, sure, but the engine compartment was hanging open, bits of piping and wiring hanging out, like viscera pouring from some mortal wound. The headlamp had been smashed in, and the tires slashed too.

" _'Free...I've always been free_ '," singing again, "' _Been so sure about myself, didn't want nobody else..._ '"

Steeling himself, Axel moved slowly, deliberately over to the Dugout door, seeing it was hanging a little open. Aware he was holding his breath, he pushed the door in, and stepped inside.

He let out a tiny, pained gasp, looking around at the ruin that had been made of the place. Sure, the Dugout had always been a mess, but a _warm_ mess, _their_ mess. Even if nothing in it made any sense, that was fine, because they'd decided it shouldn't make any sense.

But now...boxes and old books lay scattered with abandon around the floor. Cassettes and old VHS tapes, some smashed, strips of black tape snaking out, as if the vandals had had some vendetta against them, or against what was in them, the songs, the soaps, Moonboy's poetry readings, Axel's color commentary...

The cassette left in the tape deck kept playing. Dem's voice singing on, as if nothing had happened, as if everything was just the way it had always been, as if the Dugout was still the time capsule they'd never intended it to be, but it had become anyway.

" _'I'm falling in love and falling apart/Trying to keep ahold of my heart/But the sun's going down..._ " he nearly dissolved into a peal of giggles on his own part now, "' _Come on, your line, jump in_."

" _Do I_ have _to?_ "

" _Well, as frontman, I'm actually kinda your boss. Like, I know we don't talk about it, but I could totally fire you if I wanted..._ "

" _You'd never fire me. It's my pretty face that fills seats._ "

" _Hmph. I'm prettier._ " Dem cleared his throat, resuming, " _But the sun's going down, and I'm going out of my mind_..." the tape stopped, shuddered, and repeated the line, " _Out of my mind/Out of my mind/Out of my mind_..." over and over again.

Another noise cut in, a low, weak moan, alarmingly close. Axel looked around with a start, heart thundering in his breast.

There was an outstretched arm, splayed out just behind the couch, fingers twitching feebly. There was something on the wrist, a hemp bracelet with a little charm hanging off it...the letters _CP_.

"Demyx!" Axel breathed, hurrying over "Dem, hey, you o..." he got down on one knee, stopping himself, "...kay?"

Hayner groaned again, turning his head enough so Axel could spot a splotchy pink bruise on the side of it. His eyelids fluttered, a tiny whimper escaping his lips.

"D-Dem...?" he managed, saying the name with a desperate fear, "Demyx..."

"Uh...no," Axel began, "No, I'm not...I'm not Dem..."

Hayner got to his hands and knees so quickly Axel was surprised he didn't break something important. He scrambling back like some possessed crab,

"Back off, man! Just _back off_!"

"Whoa, whoa, it's cool!" Axel told him, lifting his hands, "I come in peace."

"Where's Demyx?"

"That's a really good question." Axel moved closer, "Look, I'm not gonna..."

" _Yah!_ " and Hayner flung a ratty paperback poetry book at him. Emily Dickinson, must've belonged to Saix. How appropriate.

Axel's hood was knocked loose by the book, his hair falling, tangled and sweaty, into his face.

"Look, okay, I'm not gonna _hurt_ you!" Axel shouted, "I'm a friend of..."

"You're that guy," Hayner cut him off, looking him up and down, eyes lingering particularly on Axel's hair, "Larxene's deadbeat biker."

"My reputation precedes me."

"Dem never shuts up about you."

Axel wasn't sure why that made him feel a little stab of pride, but it did regardless, "Yeah, well he used to want to _be_ a deadbeat biker himself, before he discovered music, or..." he paused for maybe a bit too long, eyes lingering on Hayner, "whatever."

"Aren't you supposed to be on the run from the cops?"

"That was the plan, but your buddy keeps finding ways to keep me around." Axel tried to manage a smile, but he wasn't really in it. The tape was still stuck, Dem singing, " _Out of my mind_ " on an endless loop.

"What, were you guys recording your next single, or something?" Axel asked, indicating the tape recorder.

Hayner shook his head, "J-just goofing off. I dropped by last night, brought him some takeout from the Cabana, that's this...place we go to. With the others. They go there too."

"Hey, I believe it," said Axel, remembering again Larxene's theory about her brother and his best bud which, let's face it, at this point might as well be fact.

"...I figured we could, like, jam together, have some fun..." Hayner stopped himself, his throat working as if he'd just swallowed a grapefruit whole.

 _Jesus, how hasn't Rainman figured this one out yet?_ Axel thought with genuine pity, though the thought of Demyx brought him just as quickly back to the matter at hand.

"Look, Hayner...it's Hayner right?"

"Yeah," he hesitated, "How do you know my name?"

"Musta heard Dem mention it once, memorized it. Do you remember what happened?"

Hayner shrugged, "No...I...I wish I did. Man, I was so distracted..."

"You sure sounded it," Axel indicated the tape recorder again.

"Well, yeah, I ragged on him a bit. We do it all the time, but...Dem's got this way of _owning_ the music. You get that?"

Axel did not, "Oh yeah, sure," he said quickly, impatiently, "So you didn't see..."

But Hayner was talking now, with absolutely no prompting from him.

"He gets so _lost_ in it when he's playing, it's like something else. Even stupid stuff."

Axel was tempted to ask what counted as _not_ stupid from what he'd heard Demyx play so far, but resisted the impulse in the name of the severity of the situation.

"And he was so happy. I didn't know why, but he's been all goofy smiling the last few days."

Axel figured he had a good idea why, and that hurt him as much as it made him feel this weird, warm sentiment he wasn't sure he was comfortable with.

"I thought, something must have happened to him to put in a good mood, you know?"

"Reasonable assumption."

"And I...I was thinking I might..." his eyes got kinda glassy, and he pressed his hand to his forehead, letting out a long sigh.

"Get something off your chest, huh?"

Hayner didn't say anything right away, but he came unsteadily to his feet, grabbing onto the back of the sofa.

"I don't get it," he said distantly, "Dem never did a thing to anybody, who would want to..."

"So someone came in here, to the Dugout? Took you out?"

"Musta been. Felt like a brick or something hit me in the head..."

"I think I woulda walked in on a bit of a different scene if it had been a brick, kid."

"I'm _not_ a kid!" Hayner spat in a surprisingly forceful petulance that, shock of shocks, reminded Axel of himself for a horrible half second, "Fuck...we've gotta find him."

"That we do," Axel looked around, attention being drawn forcefully to the blaring tape recorder, "Oh, for the love of..."

He crossed over to it and switched it off, "You know how old this thing is?"

"Uh..."

"Neither do I, but it's _old_. Dug it out of a pile of trash during a sleet storm in subzero weather, nearly froze my fingers off."

"All for some old tape recorder? Why?"

"Because I _wanted_ to, that's why." Axel snapped, looking around at the unbalanced couch, the scuffed piano, the eviscerated tapes all over the place, "Everything here...it's here because we wanted it, and we worked to get it."

Hayner crossed his arms, nudging the fallen book of poetry with one foot, "Dem always talks about...how much time you guys used to spend here. This was like...your hangout spot."

"More than that," Axel wasn't sure why he was even bothering to say all this, but he turned to address Hayner anyway, "It was home."

And he'd missed it all these years. But Dem...Dem had never left it, alone of all of them. It had still been his place, his home, even as Larxene tried to build one for the both of them.

Whoever had done this...whyever they had done it...could they possibly know what this place _was_? What it meant? Did they care?

Could anyone really care about this shitty hole in the wall? Anyone but the four people who'd come together from the alleys, gutters and, in one case, a spectacularly lonely ivory tower to turn it into something more, for no other reason than because they could?

An unsteady, broken strumming brought Axel out of his reverie. Hayner had found the sitar, plucking it clumsily.

"Never could figure out how you're supposed to play this thing," he fretted.

"Add that to the list of mysteries."

"I can't imagine Dem without it. Wherever he is, whatever happened to him... He'll go nuts without his music, I just know."

Axel was about to accuse the kid of being melodramatic, but he found he couldn't. Matter of fact, there was a weird sort of sense in losing your sanity when you lost the thing you were best at.

"We've got to find him," said Hayner.

"We do."

"We should like...go to the cops or something, right?"

"Yeah, something tells me that wouldn't end real well for me."

"Look, man, I don't wanna offend you, or anything, but I don't really _care_ about whatever you did and whatever they want you for. Long as Dem's in trouble, _that's_ all I care about."

"I get it," Axel cut him off, "Believe me, I do."

He was quiet for a while, looking at the awkward, yet strangely tender way he held the sitar aloft alongside him, like it was something he truly couldn't understand but couldn't help but admire all the same.

"You really care about him, don't you?" Axel asked at length.

"Wh-what?" Hayner stumbled over the word, looking caught, "Well, I mean yeah, he's my best..."

"He's your best friend. But you wish he were more that that."

Hayner's face reddened, but Axel managed a smile, "And now that he's gone and who knows where he is, you're afraid you'll never get to tell him."

When Hayner spoke, his voice was scratchy, defensive, yet vulnerable, "What the hell do _you_ know about how I feel?"

"I don't," Axel shook his head, "But I'm a good guesser. Peg it on life experience." he sighed, "Look, you oughta go to the cops, tell them everything that happened, whatever you remember."

"What about you?"

"Well, it would be nice if you could kinda forget about me while we're there, I'd really appreciate it."

"I mean what are you gonna _do_?"

"Only thing I _can_ do," Axel was already striding across the Dugout to the door, "tell the family."

 _And won't they be overjoyed to see me,_ He couldn't help but think, _Again._

* * *

For all intents and purposes, Sora was pretty impressed with himself. A few days ago, the ordeal of being bound, gagged and left in an overgrown stretch of wasteland for an entire night would have been an absurdly terrifying, never mind impossible thing to think about.

But compared to being shot, abducted, forced to fight wild dogs, and jumping from a moving train, this was pretty tame. Still not the most convenient of circumstances, but Sora figured it could be worse.

If only he could figure out what the hell was going on this time and how the hell he could get out of it.

He had no recollection of who had knocked him out, just a voice, deep, gruff, sounded like he probably gargled nails after breakfast. Nor did he have any indication what had happened to Riku, only that it probably had something to do with Giant Nail Gargler who, Sora could only assume, had only wanted Riku, and so had left Sora here to lie in the thistles and brambles like some discarded trash for the entire night.

Whoever these people were, they must really want Riku for some reason, at Sora's expense every time.

Riku... That was the biggest downside of being tied up and alone all night, well besides the obvious. Sora had nothing to listen to but his own thoughts, and they were rarely pretty ones.

Riku, mysterious broody Riku with his unspoken agendas and his surprising cleverness and, apparently, his giant crush.

Sora had been going over everything in his head since he'd come back around. First noticing Riku sitting across the lawn, staring at Kairi, staring at _him_ kissing Kairi. His attempts to apologize outside Selphie's place the night of the party, the quiet, almost ashamed guilt in his voice in the tunnel at the edge of town.

The tunnel where they'd first met. Sora still couldn't wrap his mind around it. Riku had _remembered_ him, held onto the memory of him for all these years, built an entire world around it.

It scared him, knowing that, thinking about it. Never mind that Riku had... _feelings_ for him, but that he'd held them for so long. Sora couldn't imagine that, couldn't begin to think how that worked.

 _You shouldn't have left him,_ he'd thought, more than once, through the night, _He can't help how he feels. That's what they say, right? You can't choose who you fall in love with, guy or girl or tag champion._

And this thought would be followed by the next, _He_ had _a choice. He had half his life to make choices. It didn't_ need _to be you. And you don't need to feel bad because_ he's _the one that ruined everything_.

But that was it, wasn't it? Whatever Riku had done, he hadn't ruined _everything_. He wasn't the reason Kairi had been kidnapped, at least not so far as Sora could figure. He wasn't the reason Sora had gotten so riled up that night that he'd chased him to the town limits.

And Riku had gone back, hadn't he? Gone to the Coliseum even when he didn't have to, and insisted Sora get out of there with him.

 _Well, yeah, of_ course _he helped you. He's in_ love _, remember? How could he pass up a chance to be a hero?_

But then again, hadn't Sora been thinking the same thing, when he'd run out into that storm, no goal in mind but to stop Riku before he even started, for Kairi's sake?

 _That's different. Kairi's different. Kairi and me..._

What? _Loved_ each other? Sora supposed so, yet the word was hard, even just to think. Selphie would probably say something about boys having trouble connecting with their emotions. But Sora still knew what he felt, why he'd been so worried for Kairi, why he'd felt responsible for what happened to her, why he knew he needed to help her.

Riku didn't feel the same way, he couldn't. No one could, not if they didn't really know the other person at all.

Sora didn't pity him, he couldn't, not after everything. And yet...he _did_ owe him his life, didn't he? Such as it was.

The cords cut into his wrists, and even worse into his legs, though Sora supposed it would be worse if the scar on his leg was still open. He'd probably have been emptied of all bodily fluids long before he could debate to what degree this was all Riku's fault.

Riku had had a hand in that too, binding up his leg. Hmph.

The sky continued to lighten over the horizon. Sunrise getting closer and closer. Someone would come for him, someone would find him.

And then? Back to normal? No, he couldn't do that, not with Kairi still missing. Even if he wanted to just forget about all this, go back to his life, let other people take care of it, he knew that something, always, would keep him from sitting still, from just watching from the sidelines.

"We should turn back," a voice, low and solemn, from somewhere over the ridge. Sora tensed, tried to sit up but, as with every time he'd attempted the same action this whole night, nothing came of it, "There's nothing for us here."

"The sharpshooter says otherwise," the other voice was smoother, yet deeper at the same time. A rough voice trying desperately to sound refined.

"And he's never been less than trustworthy before, has he?"

"We have our orders. Long as the Superior has that one whispering in his ear, we do as he says."

"If the boy had any sense in him, he'd have taken off without stopping a second," Sora was beginning to hear rustling in the thicket, branches and old grass being crunched underfoot.

 _Luck remains shitty as ever_ , he reflected, trying feebly to move in the only way that was available to him...wriggling to the side like a none-too-bright snake.

The other voice responded, "Maybe. If he survived. If not..."

"That's another set of problems, then. Probably better for us in the end, anyway."

"You think so?"

"He's hung too many hopes on this boy," there was almost no registry in the man's voice, he spoke with a determined calm, as if nothing had ever bothered him in his life, and nothing could. Somehow that only made the whole thing more upsetting.

"Only setting himself up to be disappointed."

"No man's a man 'till he's been disappointed," there was the barest hint of irony in the other man's voice, "He could benefit for it."

"You agree, then? There's no point searching?"

"You speak too soon," and a shadow fell over Sora. Two shadows, huge shadows, tall and broad, dominant against the still dark ground, even though the sun had not even completely risen, "Looks like someone's already tossed one away."

Sora could feel his pulse pounding, his heart beating in his ears, his mouth. He tried to make a noise, to cry out, but the dirty rag looped through his mouth made that a futile effort.

 _Not again_ , he found himself thinking, frantically, _not again, dammit, not_ now _..._

He tried to scramble away, bound arms stretched out in front of him, grasping madly at whatever he could for purchase, but it was no use. He felt a hand around the collar of his teeshirt, jerking his head back.

Sora let out a muffled cry, looking up into the man's face, shrouded in shadow. But he could still make a mess of black hair, dreadlocks it looked like, and a pair of beady black eyes, shiny, almost predatory.

"Now, now..." his voice was a whisper, yet it somehow seemed loud as anything Sora had ever heard, "You recognize him, of course?"

"The other child," Sora could just barely glimpse the other man, even taller and broader than this one, built like a Marine, with close cropped ginger hair and a face so stony and inexpressive it may as well have been cut from stone.

"You've had a run of bad luck, haven't you?" asked the first man, "Stumbling into the worst places at the worst times." he turned to his partner, "Why do you suppose he's been left behind?"

"He's got a tongue in his mouth. Ask him."

"And have him scream red murder for every soul in a mile to hear?" he smiled, a cold, cruel smile, "You're losing your touch, Lexeaus."

"This one has nothing to fear from us."

"Did you hear that?" he hefted Sora up by the collar of his shirt, sending his bound limbs flailing, "Nothing to fear."

In the better light, Sora could see a strong, square face, bushy eyebrows. The other man, Lexeaus, stood just a little away, arms built like tree trunks crossed in front of him. They both dressed in black uniforms, like combat fatigues but with no insignia.

"We know what happened to the other boy," the man continued, eyes not leaving Sora's own, "The old woman, she's been out to get her claws back in the boy since she lost him. But this one..." he shook Sora lightly, "...this one is nothing."

"Maleficent's not that sloppy," said Lexeaus, "She wouldn't just leave a witness out here to expose her to the first person who came along."

" _Maleficent's_ not sloppy. Her people, on the other hand..."

Sora wanted to talk, wanted to scream, but he could do no more than moan incoherently through his gag. So what if Riku's crazy surrogate mother had gotten her hands on him again? This was nothing to do with him, nothing at all. And even if he wanted to sell anybody out, he couldn't because he had no idea what had happened last night, in more ways than these guys probably cared to know.

"This one knows nothing," the man turned back to Lexeaus, "Only one thing to do."

He made some slight gesture with his other hand and, with nothing beside a little clinking noise, Sora found a cold, sharp point protruding from the collar of the man's coat, inches from his own throat. Sora felt his blood run cold.

"Xaldin!" Lexeaus warned, but Sora wasn't about to put his fate in the hands of this emotionally disassociated brick house.

Not even thinking, he kicked outward with his bound legs, connecting with what he could only hope was something important _somewhere_ on Xaldin.

He stepped back with a muffled swear, letting Sora fall back to the ground so fast the air was knocked out of him, and he swallowed a good mouthful of dirt. The gag was dislodged from his mouth, though, and Sora found himself taking in whole, sweet mouthfuls of early morning air, aching lungs almost singing in relief.

"Little bastard," Xaldin was muttering, and Sora heard another little noise, as of another conveniently concealed weapon revealing itself.

"We're not cutthroats," Lexeaus scolded.

"Aye. They already _sent_ the cutthroat, and look at the mess he made."

"They wanted a man killed, they wouldn't've sent us."

"Not you, maybe. And we're not talking about a man, in any respect."

"The boy's done nothing. We kill him, there's another slew of questions to answer for and no reward."

Sora had to admit, this guy's taciturn pragmatism was one of the more refreshing displays of charity he'd been shown in the last few days, but he wasn't about to pin all his hopes on it.

"Help!" he screamed, his voice coming out hoarse, raw and scratchy from disuse, "Somebody help! They're going to..."

He felt a blow to the back of his head, the world seeming to explode around him, and then struggle to put itself back together.

"Deftly done," he could hear Xaldin muttering sarcastically, "We won't have anybody asking questions after _that_ ,"

"You shouldn't have threatened to kill him," said Lexeaus who, judging by the way everything seemed to spin around him, had just hefted Sora over his shoulder as easily as if he were a sack of flour.

"And what's your solution? Bring him back home like some lost animal?"

"Yes," replied Lexeaus at once.

Sora supposed he should be relieved he wasn't being cut up into pieces, but he didn't really have the capacity for relief at the moment, this being his second kidnapping this week.

* * *

The coffee pot stopped perking with a laborious, almost pained sluggishness, sputtering a few last pathetic times before flat lining, the way it did every morning.

Larxene always got restless, waiting for her coffee like this, but today was made no easier by the hovering presence just over her shoulder, doggedly perusing the financial section of the morning paper.

"Quiet," said Luxia, not lifting his eyes to look at her, "Isn't it?"

"I hadn't noticed," Larxene said automatically, beginning to pour out a mug of coffee, pushing some stray hair from her eyes with her free hand.

"I'm up for review today," he continued, "by the Board."

"I thought they already approved you."

"Oh, well, just a formality from what I figure. A few last hoops that need jumping through."

Larxene tried to smile at him, to impart some confidence, but found she couldn't. Odds are, he wouldn't want any from her anyway, so why bother.

"Larxene," he said her name with a different kind of soft intensity, as she joined him at the table, "I am sorry."

"For what?" she asked, sinking into the chair across from him, "I thought we've already established whose fault everything is."

"I shouldn't've acted the way I did,. It was...inappropriate of me. It's not your fault you...took pity on an old friend the way you did."

Larxene tried to meet his eyes, even as hurried, rushed images of Axel's arms around her came back to her mind, her kissing the red teardrops beneath his eyes, his legs closing around her body.

Dammit, for all that had happened, all they'd both been through, that night had still been _so_ good. And she hated Axel for that, almost as much as she hated herself for her part in it, and for sitting here across from Luxia, letting him prostrate himself in apology.

But she was used to playing a role, wasn't she? It was, after all, her most reliable skillset.

"We sometimes do unusual things," Luxia continued, "for the ones we love."

"Luxia..."

He shook his head, "Is it a lie? You loved him once, Larxene, didn't you?"

She sighed, "I did. More and more lately, I wish I hadn't. But Axel..." she shrugged, "he made it too hard _not_ to love him."

It was strange, talking to him of all people about this, but he was leaning forward over the table, head cocked to the side as if he was really interested, really cared. That was the thing with Luxia, he listened, to everything, good or bad.

"You'll be alright," he told her, "Some time passes...it'll be like he was never here. And we'll go on," he nodded again.

 _You should tell the truth_ , she thought, _you and Axel, at the Dugout. Just to get it out there, just to get the record straight_.

But the more she thought of it, the more unappealing the idea became. If Larxene told him about her night with Axel, it would be just tearing open the wound before it had even started closing. It would never be over, never be gone, the ghost of Axel hovering at the periphery of her existence forever, preventing her from ever moving on.

This was her life now. Her and Luxia, the company, their perfect house, their perfect home. No matter what Axel did or said, how much Demyx protested, this is where she would stay.

But if she went back to lying, especially lying about Axel, wouldn't she have learned nothing? Been right back where she started?

"Luxia..." she began, "there's something..."

A heavy rapping on the door cut her off.

"Who on earth could that be at this hour?" Luxia looked off toward the door, brow furrowed in thought.

"Probably Demyx," Larxene got to her feet, recovering herself, "kid keeps forgetting his keys."

"Demyx..." Luxia repeated faintly, but Larxene was already at the door, drawing back the latch and opening it...

"Oh _no fucking way_..." she moved to close the door at once, but a sturdy, worn combat boot shunted itself into the doorframe, jamming the door.

"Rene, I know you probably want to throw something at me..."

"Try several somethings."

"It's serious. Really serious." Axel's eyes were wide and pleading, his face flushed, as if he'd run the whole way back.

"Are you out of your mind?" and there was Marluxia, standing behind her in the foyer, coffee mug held up to his lips, " _What_ are you doing back here?"

"Well, I didn't miss you, if that's what your worried about," Axel looked from him back to Larxene, "C'mon, Larxene, you gotta let me in, they might have followed me."

" _They_? Who, the cops?"

"I'm thinking someone worse." And something about his voice told her that he wasn't lying

Larxene sighed, stepping aside so Axel could enter. She leaned against the door, letting it close behind her.

"I don't understand," Luxia continued, "What's going on?"

"Really..." Axel panted, leaning against the couch, "really good question."

"Axel..." Larxene began, but he cut her off.

"It's Dem, Rene. He's gone."

"Gone?" Larxene felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her, "Gone, what do you mean _gone_?"

" _Gone_ ," Axel repeated, "Taken, kidnapped...At the Dugout, he was...attacked or knocked out or..." he let out a shaky breath.

"You've got believe me, Rene," and Larxene could detect a note of fear in his words, a fear she hadn't heard in some time, "C'mon, it's Dem, you know I wouldn't lie about..."

"You're saying some faceless thug kidnapped the kid?" asked Luxia from where he was leaning against the doorframe.

"Not too surprising, people have been going missing left and right."

" _Women_ ," Marluxia sniffed, "whatever else Demyx is, he's not that."

"Who the hell picked _you_ for Manliness Spokesman?" demanded Axel with a roll of his eyes.

"Stop it," Larxene said quietly, arms crossed. She found she couldn't take her eyes away from Zazu in his cage, sitting on the perch and rustling his wings, "He didn't come home last night."

"Not new for him. Ten to one he got wind I was back and wanted to avoid the inevitable clashing of wills..."

"Man, could you _stop_?" Axel demanded, "Jesus Christ, I thought _I_ was self-involved."

"I should have noticed," Larxene continued, "When he didn't come back, I should have done something..."

"It's not your fault," said Axel, "I kind of had you distracted."

He looked from Larxene to Marluxia, and his shoulders slumped, "I...uh...I guess it's no use keeping a lid on it now..."

"On what?"

"Dem's the reason I came back. Last night I mean. And now, obviously, but..."

"What...you mean he sent you back here?"

"He wanted me to talk to you," he straightened up, hands in his pockets, looking decidedly uncomfortable, "Convince you to...um..."

His attention lingered on Luxia for a while before he finally let loose with a deep sigh, "To cut loose."

There was a brief silence before Marluxia threw back his head and laughed, a weirdly musical laugh, "You mean to tell me you risked arrest for yourself...for _all_ of us, broke back into my house, and stayed another night you didn't need to stay, all so you could help the deadbeat kid break up his sister and me?"

"Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny too," said Axel dryly, "But, yanno, the more time passes, the more I'm convinced he had a point..."

" _Stop it_!" Larxene cried out in a voice that surprised even herself, "Both of you."

Axel, seemingly having learned his lesson, quieted down, chastened. Luxia, on the other hand, stood in defiance, arms crossed, "I honestly can't believe this. Truly, I can't."

"Well, honest or not, it's happening," said Axel, "so you can shut up about it."

"Larxene, maybe it's just me, but this is looking more and more like a stunt." said Marluxia.

"A _stunt_?" she repeated, incredulous.

"He said it himself," he indicated a legitimately surprised Axel, "The boy's not thrilled about us being together. Now he's gone, and _this one..._ " another nod at Axel, "is his goodwill ambassador."

"What kind of bull..." began Axel, but Larxene cut him off.

"Are you _seriously_ saying Demyx was _so_ bothered by us being together that he faked his own kidnapping?"

"We both know he's barely a kid, however old he is."

"Yeah, he is. But he's not _stupid_ ,"

She'd been so dismissive of Demyx, especially lately. Of his complaints about Marluxia, that he didn't like him, that he wasn't right for her. And, yes, it had been all too easy to read them as jealousy, normal little brother vs. big sister spit-slinging, they'd been at that game all their lives.

"And he wouldn't do a thing like that, because he knows damn well I'd tear him to shreds when I found him."

"Look, Rene..." Larxene's impulse was to correct him, keep the pet name out of his mouth, but she had to admit, it was sort of anchoring hearing it now that everything had sped up to the nth degree around her, "I'm not gonna stop you. From, well...doing what you need to."

Probably detecting Larxene's blank expression, Axel sighed, looking thoroughly uncomfortable, and said, "Calling the cops."

He winced at the word 'cops', as if the utterance itself caused him physical pain.

"I'll tell them everything I saw," he nodded, "Whatever they need to hear, as long as it..."

"I'm sorry?" Marluxia cocked his head to the side, "We're not involving the police."

" _What_?" Larxene and Axel asked it almost in the same breath, but Larxene's was louder.

"Larxene, we've been harboring a fugitive. He gives a statement to the police, then we all end up in hot water."

"No way it'd be hotter than whatever Dem's been dunked into," said Axel flatly.

"My brother's _life_ is in danger, Luxia, so you're gonna have to forgive me if I don't mind answering a few uncomfortable questions."

"We have no way of knowing he is in danger!" Marluxia protested, leaning across the back of the couch, nearly spitting into Larxene's face, "For all we know, the brats are just playing some..."

"Brats?" Larxene interrupted him, "What do you mean, brats?"

"Dem's friend," said Axel, "The one who's got the hots for him, he was there..." he trailed off, eyes widening, "...too."

Larxene looked from Axel back to Luxia, feeling goosebumps prickle up and down her arms.

"I never said that, did I?" asked Axel softly.

"No," said Larxene, "you did not."

Marluxia, prim, upright, dignified Marluxia, looked for the first time since Larxene had known him, cornered.

"How did you know about Hayner?" asked Larxene softly.

"I didn't," he said softly, unsteadily, "really, Larxene, I just miss..."

"He's lying," said Axel, but Larxene didn't need him to tell her that.

"You knew," she said, her words feeling heavy as stones, sharp as knives as they left her lips.

"Larxene, you're being ridiculous..."

" _Liar!_ " a rage so pure, so primal that it would have scared her, had she the presence of mind to be scared, coursed through Larxene, as she lunged for him, passing Axel, who'd already taken a few step closer, grabbing Marluxia by the thin, silky fabric of his pale green shirt, pulling him close so he was forced to look down the bridge of his nose at her.

"What did you _do_?"

"Larxene, for God's sake, _think_!" he told her, struggling, but not very effectively, against her grip, "What the hell would I have to gain from having your brother kidnapped? You're letting _him_ get to your head."

"Don't try to pin this on him!" Larxene warned, not even looking Axel's way as he called, "Yeah!" from the back of the room.

"It's no secret Demyx and I don't see eye to eye," said Marluxia in a measured voice, "If I was going to get rid of him, I had countless opportunities before this, why would I only be doing it now? I was on a business trip all weekend, the perfect alibi, why not have it done when I was out of town?"

"Perfect alibi?" she could practically hear Axel rolling his eyes, "It's like one of those cop shows where we get the bad guy to fess up to everything on his own. None of us even mentioned an alibi, not till you..."

"Business trip," Larxene blinked, "The business trip..." catching herself, she looked up at him, "You came back a whole day early."

"I-I did, yes..."

"With a promotion."

"Larxene, what the hell are you suggest..."

"Oh shit," Larxene turned to Axel, who had spoken, "Holy shit."

"What?" she asked.

"Last night," Axel's hands were shaking, the way Larxene knew they only got when he was either really on edge or in desperate need of a cigarette, "he was on the phone..."

"You were eavesdropping on me?"

"Attic isn't exactly soundproof, didn't have much of a choice." he raised a finger to point at Marluxia, "You were talking about some...business thing, I remember you mentioned the promotion. And then...you told...whoever it was...to get done whatever they were doing today. You said Larxene would warm up to it, eventually."

"And that was...what, exactly?" scoffed Marluxia, "Some coordinated plot to...to _abduct_ some teenage boy? I'm an _accountant_!"

"No," said Larxene, "You're on the Board. Awaiting approval."

"Well, yes, but..." he blinked blankly.

Larxene let him go, turning the other way, hands pressed to her head.

"You got back from the meeting a day early, talking about some...some new position, Vexen throwing a tantrum..."

"And what is that, positive evidence I was told to...to _kidnap_ your brother?" he demanded, face flushed, "Larxene, you sound in..."

"Stop _lying_!" she whirled on him and, before she even knew what she was doing, she'd pushed him, clear across the living room, right into his prized display of glass works.

He went reeling into the metal trellis, the glass figures coming crashing down to the floor beside, beneath and upon him. Zazu let out a shriek, Axel a cry that sounded both surprised and approving.

Some tiny voice in the back of Larxene's mind was telling her to be shocked, to be appalled at what she'd done to this man she'd loved, now lying feebly on the floor, blinking and bleeding like some broken bird. But another voice, the one that had used to ride the streets of this town bedecked in battle scarf and beret, overrode it, louder than it had been in years.

"I'm not _stupid_ , Luxia, I can tell when someone's lying!" she cried down at him, kicking him in the side so that he let out a strangled, pained gasp.

But how could that be? How could she tout her own skills as a human lie detector, if she'd been living with his lies this whole time?

The thought made her want to kick him again, cave his head in with her foot. Larxene got down in front of him, his beautiful, Renaissance sculpture of a face, now scratched in places where the glass had hit him, and took him by the shoulders.

"What did you _do_?"

Luxia tried to turn away from her, and she grabbed him in one hand, forcing his face back forward.

" _Tell me!_ "

"Larxene..." she felt Axel's hand on her shoulder, "C'mon, he's not gonna..."

"I know he's not," she squeezed Marluxia's face tighter between her fingers, forcing out a pained gasp, "Not until I make him."

And Axel let go of her. So he had learned some things, then. Good.

"T-they were..." when Luxia spoke, his voice was tiny, cracked, "...they needed someone."

"Who?"

"You know who," his words shook with anger, disdain, pity, but for himself or for her she had no idea, "I found out what they were up to..." he closed his eyes, "Black ledgers..."

"Black what?" asked Axel.

"Money," said Larxene, not looking away from Marluxia, "Hiding extra money from prying eyes."

"What, this all happened because you uncovered a Ponzi scheme?"

Larxene was about to tell Axel to shut up and let her do the talking here, but Luxia spoke first, "I thought I could...I could make use of what I'd learned. Get some...ah!" he moaned softly, blood trickling down his chin onto his shirt, staining the green almost black, "...l-leverage."

"Blackmail," she said, not a question, "The promotion."

He nodded, "I thought I was... _so_ clever..."

"You do have a habit."

"...they agreed. B-but they needed something to...to make sure I kept my silence."

"Demyx?" Larxene whispered the name.

" _You_ ," his eyes shimmered with tears, "they wanted you."

"For what?" asked Axel, but whatever Luxia knew or didn't know, he didn't say.

"I couldn't let that happen," he said desperately, "Larxene, you know how I feel about you, how much I love you, I was _never_ going to let them have you, not for..."

"But you'd let them have my brother." her voice was a calm so deep it unnerved her, "Right?"

"They needed _someone_..."

"And you thought I'd be okay with that? You setting it up like Demyx was kidnapped, never to be found? That I would just...get over it..."

"I did it for _you_!"

"You did it for yourself!" she let go of Marluxia's face, letting his head drop back to the floor as she got unsteadily to her feet. Axel offered her an arm to take, but she ignored it.

"Larxene, you can't imagine how scared I was, that they were going to _hurt_ you, I was only trying to protect..."

"You were trying to protect yourself. And if you got rid of Dem in the bargain, why not? You're a coward. Dem saw that. Maybe he couldn't find the words for it, but he _saw_. If you knew me at all, Marluxia, if you loved me even _half_ as much as you ever said you did, you would never have whispered a _word_ against my brother."

She stopped, realizing how quickly her heart was thundering in her breast, her hands shaking, "Where is he?" she asked, steely.

"W-what?"

" _Where_ is Demyx?" she practically screamed the question, aiming another kick at Marluxia's gut.

He curled up there, among the broken glass, whimpering like a sick animal, "Y-you can't...Larxene, you can't..."

"You'd be amazed at what I can do," she told him, "I'm not gonna ask you again."

And he relented, "T-the Mansion."

"The what?" asked Axel, but Larxene needed no clarification.

"I'm going to get him back," she told Luxia, "Don't even think about stopping me."

"I think you've kicked the stop right out of him," Axel attempted a smile, but it didn't stick, "That was pretty hardcore,"

"Stuff it," Larxene had already hurried to the kitchen table to collect her handbag, which she rifled through in record time before turning to the counter, where Marluxia had left his _X_ -Corp I.D.

"So what about this Mansion? Where is it?" Axel asked as Larxene pocketed the I.D.

"Not far."

"Cause, I'd offer to take my bike, but this guy's thugs totaled it."

"I can manage."

" _I_?"

"I as in me,"

"What about me?" he spread his arms wide, looking honestly taken aback, "What, you're not bringing me?"

"This isn't a field trip, Ax, my brother's being held hostage..."

"Yeah, by some shady Megacorp..."

"That I happen to work for."

"Still, you're gonna need some backup." he sighed, "Look, Dem's my friend. I owe it to him, whether we go for the cops or dive into the muck ourselves."

Larxene hesitated, recalling the glow in Axel's eyes when she'd shown him that old Dugout picture. The insistence with which he'd dragged her to Dem's concert.

That last time she'd seen him. And she wouldn't even have been there for it if it hadn't been for Axel.

"Fine," she said, "But you've got to do everything I say."

"Yeah, what else is new?" he shrugged, clearly trying to look more at ease than he really felt.

Somehow Larxene found herself appreciating that.

Over in the corner, Luxia let out a low moan, "L-Larxene, you can't..."

"Regular broken record you've got here," said Axel, "One sec."

He kicked back with one leg, connecting the heel of his boot to Luxia's head, knocking him out.

"He looks pretty beaten up," Larxene commented, taking in her boyfriend's rumpled clothes, cut skin, bruised face.

"Eh, I've done worse things to better people," Axel shrugged.

"Yeah," Larxene agreed, "Haven't we all?"

Shouldering her purse, she opened the front door, standing aside for Axel to step out ahead of her.

"Oh, wait!" she remembered just as he'd stepped out into the front garden.

"What?"

Larxene hurried over to the record player in the window and, with one little look toward Luxia, put the record back on the turntable.

' _Brown girl in the ring/Tra-la-la-la-la-la/There's a brown girl in the ring/Tra-la-la-la-la-la/Brown girl in the ring..._ '

She walked out of the house, fully aware of Axel's stupefied eyes on her as she went, "Jesus, Rex."

' _She looks like a sugar in a plum/Plum-dum_.'

* * *

 **A/N:** PSA that I try to make all my twists organic, neat, natural, and sufficiently foreshadowed. If ever a twist doesn't seem like any of those three things, please take the mickey out of me all you want.

More trials and tribulations for the souls of Destiny, Twilight, and parts subterranean next Friday. See you then!


	16. Waking Nightmares

Chapter 16, Waking Nightmares

 **A/N:** Happy update day! As I mentioned last time, this chapter is set alongside the events of Chapter 15, also narrating the events of Monday morning, but from four different points of view.

I don't think there's much else to add, so enjoy!

* * *

It was a hot, stuffy, suffocating sort of afternoon. The kind of day where the whole world seemed to hum with some unseen energy, like a battery close to bursting.

Heat shimmered in waves off the asphalt of the road, off the rocks to either side. Everything was suffused with a whitish light, the sun seeming to bring out a type of previously unseen radiance from everything it touched.

And here he sat, in the darkness, in the comparative cool, feeling the dry, yet soft breeze through the mouth of the tunnel. Letting it caress his face, stir the edges of his too big jacket. He could have shrunk into those clothes, disappeared in them, been invisible.

Maybe that had even been the idea, he couldn't really remember anymore. He'd just watched, sat and watched, a sole spectator to the lives of others, other kids, _normal_ kids.

He hadn't wanted to be seen, he'd been afraid of it, really. But he'd still been seen.

" _Hey, Doorag! Wanna join up?_ "

Sora had remembered that. He hadn't remembered Riku, but he'd remembered that day, however faintly. Riku had been petrified, had thought of saying no. but something about that easygoing grin on Sora's face, now directed at him...

Riku had never made someone smile before. Sure, Mim had her jokes and laughs and simpering grins, but that wasn't the same. She'd been humoring him, maybe trying, in her own, futile way, not to make him feel like so much of a freak, of an outcast, a loser.

He'd offered him his hand, smiling, eyes bright, backlit by the sun from outside the tunnel. Riku remembered the way his friends were calling, as if even now they couldn't see Riku, that Sora was the only one that had been able to spot him in the darkness.

Maybe he had been.

And Riku had taken his hand, joined in the game.

" _Come on!_ " Sora's taunts, dogging his heels on the rocks, ducking in and out of the tunnel, up and down the ridge to the side of the road, " _You've gotta stay out of the light, 'cause if they see you, you're out. Don't tell me you don't know how tag works?_ "

And, having never played it before, Riku honestly hadn't. He remembered shaking his head, feeling abashed.

Sora had rolled his eyes, " _Well, just do what I do. Trust me, I'm_ really _good at this._ "

And he was. Riku couldn't remember who'd been 'it' at the time, but Sora had gotten whoever it was in the bare two minutes after proclaiming how good at this he was.

And, of course, no sooner had Riku realized 'it' was it no more, Sora had slapped him on the shoulder, and so he'd been it.

Riku hadn't realized how much he loved moving back then, how much he loved the wind on his face, the pounding of his pulse, the way your breath got short and hot, your face bent down. Maybe it had been Betty that had woken him to up to that part of himself.

All he knew then was that he had to run, had to get away. Sora, after all, was the best at this game there was. Wouldn't beating him _mean_ something?

He remembered scrambling, on his hands and knees, up the scratchy, stinging brambles that clung to the side of the nearest hill, thinking he _could_ do this, and would, reveling at the private, surreal joy of being a kid, really, truly being a kid for the first time in his...

Kairi was at the top of the hill, clutching her hands to her sides where they'd been skinned on the road, looking across at him, blue eyes cold as steel, mouth set in a fine, thin line.

" _You're not following me, are you?_ " just an ordinary question, plain as if she already knew the answer.

" _Kairi..._ " it occurred to him then, he'd never really said her name before, had he? Not to her face. He hadn't said _anything_ to her face before.

" _Selphie thinks I never notice, but she clearly hasn't been either. There's never a time when you're around me that Sora isn't there right after._ " she made to cross her arms, but winced as she did.

" _Are...are you hurt?_ "

" _I'm fine_." a pause, " _It's Sora, isn't it?_ "

" _I...I don't have anything against your boyfriend._ "

" _No, of course not. Or else_ you _would've swung the first punch._ " she was quiet for a little time, and when she spoke again, there was a tiny squeak in her voice,as if it were threatening to break apart, to shatter like glass, " _You like him, don't you_?"

He'd felt his legs weak beneath him, the frankness of the words seeming to sting more than any insults, any screamed slurs.

" _I...I don't know what you..._ "

" _The way you look at him?_ " her eyes had been teary, " _I_ know _that look. I used to look at Sora the same way. Maybe I still do, sometimes, I don't know. You want him, don't you?_ "

And her voice had broken then, " _You're in love? Oh God..._ "

" _Kairi, I never meant..._ " he'd stepped forward, not sure what to do, not even sure of himself anymore.

" _Well, of course you didn't! You can't just...turn that kinda thing on and off,_ " she'd lifted one hand, shaking, to her lips.

Riku wanted to say something, do something. She was so upset, so sad, so scared... It had been a bad idea, this stupid infatuation, this silly game he'd been playing, he never should have...

" _He won't like you back,_ " she said plainly, not an attack, just a plain statement, " _Not Sora._ "

" _I...I know that_."

" _Then why keep it up?_ _You can't just take whatever you want, the world isn't just_ you _!_ "

And he'd snapped at her then, " _You think I don't know? But you said it yourself, I...I can't..._ " and he looked away from her, arms crossed.

" _What are you going to do_?"

He'd had so many answers for that one, but at the time none of them seemed right. And then he'd turned around, and she'd been gone, probably walked off and away, never to be seen again.

Just another in the long list of casualties on Riku's quest for self-validation, or whatever the hell he was trying to do.

His head was splitting, feeling ripe to burst. Riku lifted his hands to his forehead, gritting his teeth to keep in a pained groan. Not just his head, his side too, and his hands, and his legs. His whole body burned, sore and tired.

The Overlook wasn't the Overlook anymore. No, it was a dilapidated shack somewhere west of the train tracks. Riku could feel the dusty wooden floor beneath his knees, Sora standing over him, looking at him as if he were some sort of animal, a creature deserving of pity, maybe a quick, painless death to put it out of its misery, and nothing else.

He'd wanted to say so much more to him, at the same time wishing he'd never said anything.

" _You don't even know me, I don't even know you. You can't just build some fantasy up around somebody because you're...because you're alone. And you sure as hell can't expect it to come true._ "

It had been different with Kairi. He'd wanted to argue with her, shout her down, tell her she was wrong, even as he knew he was wrong. But now, now with Sora saying the same things, looking at him like that...

"I'm sorry," he said softly, whispering it, feeling the world close in around him, dark and airless and suffocating, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I never meant to hurt you, I never meant..."

"Well, I dunno about _hurting_ nobody," a thick voice, sounding weirdly amused, "Not that you didn't try."

The world forced itself onto him. Riku began to open his eyes, wincing at the blast of morning sunlight he was greeted with at once.

The curtains had been drawn wide open, illuminating every one of the hundred or so dust motes eddying around the room. The pile of stuffed animals in the corner seemed to stare at him with unblinking, black eyes, like some plushy Greek Chorus, silently judging him. Opera music was playing somewhere, echoing throughout the house.

"Well, you gave ol' Pete a bit of a shin shine, but that's about it," the hulking mass of humanity bending over the dresser straightened up, surveying Riku's reflection in the mirror, "Nothin' I ain't seen worse of, or given back once, twice over."

"Pete..." Riku sighed the name.

Pete turned to regard him, all eight feet of him, bristly bearded face twisted into a smug smirk that, all told, hadn't really changed over the years.

"At your service, Your Majesty," he gave a little bow, beady eyes glittering with a joke only he could understand or, knowing Pete, a joke that was a joke only to him, "Gave the old lady a good scare running off the way you did. Again."

Though Riku's first impulse was to just nod in agreement until Pete left, something stopped him. Maybe it was the headache, the soreness in every part of his body, or the various ghosts, the memories cluttering his head, reminding him of what he'd done, how much he'd been through, and every sorry thing that had come of it.

"I didn't run away,:" said Riku, "I was _trying_ keep from getting kidnapped. No thanks to you guys. Some vetting process you have, by the way, the chauffeur was _very_ polite about selling me to the crime syndicate. Top job. "

"Now, you watch how you wag those lips of yours, boy," Pete warned, that slack grin not leaving his face, "Lady of the house won't take too kindly to it. You shoulda seen her when she learned about Miss Black, White and Dead all over. Old broad was spittin' fire..."

Riku was about to ask how the hell Pete and Maleficent even knew Cruella had died, but figured there'd be time to question his surrogate mother's evident omniscience later.

"Where is she? Maleficent. I need to talk to her."

"Oh, _do_ ya now?" Pete laughed gruffly, "Time enough for that, time enough..."

"It's _important_ ," Riku made to get out of the bed, only to find the floor pitching beneath him. He grabbed onto the bedstead to keep his balance, panting raggedly.

"Ooh, I'll bet it is." Pete shook his head, "Whatever talk she talks, the old lady's got more problems than you, kiddo. Believe it or not, the world don't spin around..."

"Believe me," said Riku tiredly, "I know." clearing his throat, he added, "Look, if...if you're not gonna take me to her, I'll just find her myself and..."

"Oho!" Pete chuckled, "Look who's grown hisself a _spine_ when he was deep down underground?" in a harder, more dangerous voice, he added, "The old lady'll see you when she wants to see you, and that's not now."

"I'm not asking," Riku was aware of how weak he sounded, how tired, but he kept on anyway, "I think she owes me."

"How do you figure?" he cocked his head to the side, bushy eyebrow cocked in an expression of mock thoughtfulness.

Yet again, Riku found he had dozens of answers for that, but none he wanted to let Pete in on. After all, it was on Maleficent's account the Styx and Stones were after him in the first place, for whatever reason. Add to that Jafar's apparent connection with at least one of the missing girls who, apparently, may or may not have been taken by Seifer.

And one other thing, a bit of old notepaper, still crumpled up in Riku's jeans pocket. ' _Miss M and her little gifts!_ '

"She'll send for you when she's ready," Pete nodded, "Meantime, you'll be wantin' to filler up." he indicated a tray on the dresser, which he must have been setting down when Riku came to. Toast, it looked like, toast and eggs, and a tall glass of orange juice.

"Nothin' like a full stomach to patch up a broken heart."

A tiny shock throbbed through Riku, quick, abrupt and stinging.

 _Don't say anything, don't give him the satisfaction..._

But Pete wasn't finished, "What? You think I didn't hear that gabfest with your little pally last night? Fair brought a tear to my eye."

"You don't know what you're talking about." Riku could feel the hand still on the bedpost shaking.

"Oh, don't I? You haven't been able to keep his name out yer mouth this whole night," his lips curled into a smirk, the smugness of some bratty child on the face of a middle aged man almost twice his height, " _Oh Sora!_ " he'd put on a shrill, mocking voice, " _Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, Sora..._ "

"Shut _up_!" Riku cried out, lifting his fist, aiming it for a punch, but Pete caught his arm in one meat hook hand, wrenching it behind his back like it was nothing.

Riku could feel his legs buckle beneath him, but forced himself not to fall, not to give Pete the satisfaction.

"Tell ya the truth, kiddo, I'd always figured you were a bit funny. Somethin' wrong with you from day one, that's what I said. So I can't say I'm surprised."

"You don't know me," said Riku, his head pounding so loud he was certain Pete could hear it, "Not you, not Maleficent. None of you do, _none of_..."

"Aw, spare the pity parade, won't ya?" Pete twisted Riku's arm, and he couldn't help but cry out, both from the pain in his arm and in his head, as he was spun around to look up at Pete's leering face, "Whichever way you're bent, that ain't stopped the old witch from loving you any less."

"Maleficent..." his mouth felt dry, "Maleficent _knows_?"

"She's got plenty of secrets from the likes of me and you, but that don't work both ways. What I know, she knows, see. Didn't seem that surprised, really, all things consider..."

"Sora," Riku cut him off, "what did you do to him?"

And Pete chuckled, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Riku pulled against Pete's grip, wrenching his arm free, "He doesn't belong here! He never did anything to me, to anybody..."

"Aw, still sweet on him, huh?" Pete tittered, "And after the way he stomped out on ya..."

"Where is he?"

Pete shrugged, "Well, I figure you wouldn't wanna be seeing the likes of each other anytime soon, so I put some distance between ya."

Riku got back up, reaching for the dresser to steady himself, "He's...he's not here?" he asked softly, not sure whether to be relieved or terrified.

Pete's tiny eyes were aglow with a perverse sort of glee, "Let's just say you're not likely to be running into the likes of him anytime soon."

"What?" Riku asked faintly, but Pete was already heading out the door, a raucous laugh echoing off the wallpapered walls.

"What did you do to him?" he shouted, running for the door, only to have it slammed shut before he even reached it, the distinct _click_ of the lock being drawn over it.

" _Let me out!_ " he pounded on the door, lips practically touching the wood as he cried out, "Dammit, let me go!"

Sora...it couldn't be the end, not for him. Riku didn't think he could survive that, doing that to him. Kairi abducted, Axel a fugitive, Sora dead...

He couldn't think it. The more he thought of Sora, the more his head pounded in protest. He could see red, literal red throbbing at the edge of his vision.

He'd never meant for any of this. It was never supposed to go this far, never...

He leaned over the dresser, looking at himself in the mirror. Pale face, shining with sweat, thin, wan, haggard. He looked old, tired, sick.

"Sora..." he breathed the name, closing his eyes, as much to shut out the image of his face as anything else, "Sora."

There was a weight pressing down on him, a sick pressure building up in his gut. It was as if every part of Riku's body was fighting the inevitable, even if it killed him.

But Riku couldn't fight, not anymore.

He let out a scream, a deep, rattling, primal scream, throwing the breakfast platter clear of the dresser. His legs bowed down to the floor, his forehead pressing against the cold, dusty wood of the dresser drawers.

And, before Riku knew it, the scream had died down to whimpers, soft, piteous whimpers, as he felt tears on his cheeks.

And he cried, really, truly cried for the first time in years.

* * *

Selphie woke up alone in a bed that wasn't hers, the distinct noises of boyish snoring from parts west and east of her.

"Oh poo," she whispered, sitting up and turning to the gaudy football shaped clock on the nightstand to gauge that it was, indeed, seven o'clock.

Football clock. And there, on the wall, was a lurid poster of some football dude she didn't recognize, but sure did look like a snack. And over there, by the bookcase, was a framed photo of the Destiny High football team. Sora and Tidus front row center, and the spiky raven haired updo of the second string running back poking awkwardly out from the back.

 _Spending the night in a boy's bed_ , she thought ruefully, _Wouldn't Kairi have a lot to say about this?_

But Selphie was quite sure she hadn't actually _done_ anything with either her new Boyfriend (question mark exclamation point question mark) or her new Pet Project of the Opposite Sex.

No, last night had been considerably _more_ upsetting than that.

She heard a squeaking noise from somewhere else in the apartment, and the low susurrus of running water stopped. She'd barely noticed it in the first place.

Throwing the coverlet aside, Selphie stretched her legs, realizing this was the second night running she'd slept in her clothes from the previous day, and got to her feet.

Zack's room was such a _kid's_ room. Sports posters all over the walls, comics stacked up haphazardly alongside plastic toy soldiers and old socks.

There was something weirdly wholesome about it, even in its grossness.

Another snort, interrupting the regular rhythm of snoring, drew Selphie's attention to the misshapen beanbag chair by the closet, where Tidus was sprawled out, his hoodie curled under his head like a makeshift pillow, and his chest littered with potato chip crumbs.

Selphie rolled her eyes, "Slob," and crossed over to pluck the crumbs from his shirt.

To the surprise of no one, this elicited no reaction from Tidus besides another little grunt.

"Suit yourself," Selphie shrugged, starting out of the room and down the hall.

Funny, this didn't _feel_ like a Monday.

She found Zack snoring in the Lazy Boy recliner in the living room, wearing his boxers and team jersey, fingers loosely wrapped around a wooden baseball bat, as if poised to strike whichever unlucky intruder tried to crawl in through the TV.

She considered trying to wake him up, but decided against it, seeing the dark circles under his eyes. She pegged that he'd gotten one hour of sleep, two tops.

The kitchen was nowhere near as immaculate as Selphie's was, but that wasn't surprising, given this household didn't seem like the 'takeout seven nights a week' type. Still, she was able to find her way around the place with relative ease, finding the coffee stacked up in the pantry with black beans and baking powder.

She heard footsteps behind her as she filled up the pot. Light steps, but noticeable all the same, if only because of how careful they were.

"Morning," she greeted as chirpily as she could, looking over her shoulder and nearly dropping the measuring cup as she did so.

Their unexpected guest (though did it _count_ as a guest, given this was technically _his_ place too?) stood in the kitchen doorway, fresh from the shower. Emphasis on _fresh_.

His hair, which Selphie had known to be blond since his unorthodox entrance last night, looked practically golden now that the grime and dust of wherever he'd come from had been washed from it. It stuck to his forehead in thick locks, falling neatly over crisp blue eyes.

Of course, Selphie didn't notice his _hair_ first, no. If she was gonna be honest, that was pretty immaterial considering his current state of near nudity.

He'd changed into a pair of Destiny High varsity sweats that, who knows, may actually have belonged to him, but that was all he was wearing. His body was lean, but muscled, like a runner or a swimmer. Muscles rippled in smooth, almost statuesque proportions on his chest and arms.

But a statue's body it was not. There were cuts, scars, some looking dangerously fresh, over every inch of his chest, his sides, his back. He looked like he'd been in a hundred fights, and lost as many as he'd won.

"M-morning," she said again, feeling her voice tremble stupidly.

He nodded curtly, but offered nothing else in the way of comment.

"I was just making some body," said Selphie, " _Breakfast_ , I mean, I was just making some..." she trailed off, "I'm Selphie."

He nodded again. Selphie pondered again how the hell this guy and Zack could be in any way related. Then again, she was Wakka's sister, and he was a vagabond barbarian, so this wasn't exactly a freak scenario.

"It's...um...Cloud, right?" she asked, "Like...sky clouds?"

Finally, he spoke, "Yeah. Sky clouds."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Cloud? I mean, not exactly the first thing you see in the baby book."

"And Selphie is?"

That was either a joke or a dig. Selphie was confident enough in her effortless aura of charisma to bet it was the former.

"Point. Still, given your brother's named _Zack_ , you've gotta admit there's a bit of a disconnect..."

"I never thought about it,"

This was obviously a lie intended to shut her up, but Selphie wasn't about to suffer the rest of this experience in silence.

"Breakfast of Champions?" she asked, holding up the half empty box of Wheaties from the counter, "It's either that or Fruit Loops, and that's just empty calories."

Cloud said nothing, which Selphie took as an invitation to continue. She poured out two bowls of cereal, followed by twin mugs of coffee.

"So what are you?"

Selphie lowered the coffee cup, "Huh?"

"Zack's girlfriend, or..."

"Oh! Oh no..." Selphie shook her head, blurting out a shrill giggle, "No, no, _no_ , no, not at all. Not that he's not a great guy and everything but...ahem," she crossed to the table, setting one bowl of cereal before Cloud and the other before herself before going back to get the coffee mugs, "Not my type."

"Ah," Cloud nodded, "Good."

Selphie frowned, "Well, tell me how you _really_ feel, why don't you?"

"No, I mean..." something almost resembling a smile crossed his face, "It's been too long, since I've been around him. I was thinking how much I coulda missed. Have missed."

"Oh," Selphie hesitated, tracing circles around the mouth of her mug, "Right."

They sat there, facing off across the table, for some time. Cloud raised his spoon to his mouth and slurped, but that weird, strained slurping of someone trying not to slurp.

"So..." Selphie forced herself to look higher than his pecs, hard as that was, "...you were in the...army?"

"Nothing that simple," another of those not quite smiles.

Selphie had the distinct recollection of her first learning Zack had a brother (approximately yesterday/a thousand years ago), by way of some waitress he'd used to hang around with. The whole thing had sounded super shady at the time, and current developments weren't really helping matters on that score.

"I mean...not that it's any of _my_ business..."

"You were hanging around when I showed up," Cloud said plainly, "Like it or not, it's your business now."

Hmph. Selphie adjusted herself in her seat, taking another sip from her mug, "Is that an invitation to ask as many annoying questions as I want?"

"It is not."

"How long have you been gone?" she spoke over him, head cocked coquettishly.

Cloud narrowed his eyes but, to Selphie's approval, didn't shirk from answering, "Six years."

"Wow...Zack must've been just a kid."

"Isn't he still?"

"Well, for a certain definition of..."

"And aren't you?"

"That's really not what I..."

"Listen," Cloud leaned across the table, "I owe you, and your friend too. Some people would've freaked out the moment I showed up, blown everything."

"You say that like there's a reason to freak out,"

"Depends how you look at it," he looked over his shoulder, as if to make sure there wasn't anybody spying from behind the living room sofa, "I can trust you not to tell anyone about this," he said, "Right?"

Selphie didn't say anything right away, pursing her lips in thought. In movies, this was about the time the bleached blond _femme fatale_ took a drag on her cigarette and said something like, ' _What's in it for me, tootsie?_ '

Selphie thought smoking was for plebs, however, and she was very proud of her mostly natural gingery coloring.

"You're not here to stay, then?" she asked warily.

"I can't. It's not like I don't want to, it's just not an option."

Selphie heaved a sigh, "What about Zack?"

"What about him?"

"Well, _obviously_ he was over the moon to have you drop right back into his life last night. You're just gonna camp out here for a day or two and then just ditch like it was nothing?"

"It's best that way," for the first time, Cloud looked some measure of angry, and Selphie's self restraint bestirred itself long enough to suggest pushing any further was perhaps not the wisest play in the book.

"For him, or for you?"

"Are you going to keep quiet?"

Selphie rolled her tongue around in her mouth, contemplating the merits of her answer, only to be jolted nearly out of her seat by the blaring of the phone on the wall.

A wild cry sounded from the living room as Zack half ran, half fell into the kitchen, baseball bat in hand. He looked around, wild eyed, as if he seriously expected he'd need to bash some numbskull's head in.

Cloud had gotten to his feet at once, with the fluidity of a trained soldier. All three of them stared at the phone as it rang again, then a third time.

"Someone's calling," pointed out Zack unnecessarily.

"Someone is." said Selphie.

"What do we do?"

Selphie gave him a look and crossed to the phone, taking it off the hook, "Lo, lo! Fair residence, top of the morning to you."

Cloud gave his younger brother a look, but given he was limited to only one facial expression, it was hard for Selphie to ascertain just what that was supposed to communicate. Zack shrugged though, so Selphie figured he must be trying to describe her, only to end up at a loss.

Good.

"Oh, _Mother_!" she greeted the terse voice at the other end of the phone, trying to hide her relief, "Yeah, yeah, it's me."

"What the hell is..." Tidus came staggering into the kitchen to join them. He looked from Selphie, who gave him a little twiddle of her fingers in greeting, and then over to Cloud, who he just as quickly looked away from with ill-disguised aversion.

"Oh, I'm fine. Yeah, I just spent the night at Zack's."

" _What's going on?_ " Tidus asked in a screechy whisper. Selphie pressed the box of Wheaties into his hand by way of answer, giving him a ' _Please leave this to me, sport_ ' look.

"Oh, Mother, nothing like _that_!" she laughed, "I'm not _that_ stupid."

Zack's eyes had widened in noticeable terror. Selphie gave him doe eyes, the best to soften the blow.

"Yes, I am well aware it's a dangerous time to be a woman, it always is," she winced, fully preparing the barrage of stringent diva comments that came blasting into her ear.

"Listen, I'll stay decent so long as you do, Mother," she gave a little giggle, "Oh, and I'm pretty sure Wakka's blowing the Christmas money on blow, if you want a cause to march for. Toodles!"

She hung up the phone, letting out a sigh, "Oh, _Jesus Christ_ , that was not fun."

"Your mother?" asked Cloud.

"No, Mother Mary Claire Fitzgerald, haven't I told you I'm in the convent?" Selphie rolled her eyes, looking over at Zack, "Well, this is a fine kettle of fish, ain't it?"

"That's one thing to call it," Zack scratched the back of his neck, "Thanks, Selph, for...er..."

"Don't mention it, I'm at _least_ as dead as you if this ever gets out."

"I won't be dead," said Tidus with a shrug, "But, yanno, it'd get pretty lonely."

"Your Dad wouldn't mind us bunking down with the lone marauder, over here?"

"Hey!" Zack protested, "Cloud's not a marauder!"

"Fair enough," Selphie looked him up and down, "What _is_ he?"

Zack looked at the floor, then over at his brother, clearly with the same question, but not the heart to ask it.

"In some kind of trouble, bet," Tidus looked at the cereal box in contemplation, before putting it aside, "Am I right?"

"You can trust these guys, Cloud," said Zack, seizing the Wheaties before they'd even been set down five seconds, "They're friends."

Tidus raised his eyebrows at that, but said, "Yeah, totally. Superfriends. Might even show you the secret handshake, if you play your cards right."

"I've already told you," Cloud seemed to address the three of them, but he looked only at his brother, "It's better if you don't know."

Zack got a little downcast at that, but Selphie interjected, "Now, wait just a second!"

She distinctly heard Tidus mutter, "Oh God..." under his breath, but battled on regardless, "You can't expect us... _Zack_...to keep you hidden here, no questions asked, brother or not. Let me tell you, if _my_ brother expected me to help him hunker down in _my_ place for _no_ good reason, I'd kick him right into the cold!"

"Wait, you would?" asked Zack.

"You've met Wakka, are you surprised?" she looked back at Cloud, pointing a finger inches from his nose "You owe us. You owe _Zack_ , at least."

Cloud didn't say anything to that, but Zack did, reaching out to brush her hand as she lowered it back to the table, but just as quickly withdrawing it.

"Selphie, it's okay," he cleared his throat, "You can trust Cloud. He's..." he smiled over at his brother, "...he's a good guy."

 _Maybe six years ago_ , Selphie thought, but didn't have the mettle to say.

"Well, yeah, maybe he's a great guy," said Tidus, "He still crawled in off the fire escape, looking like he just crawled out of a meat grinder."

"Hey!" Zack reddened.

"It's not just your say, man," Tidus continued, "Selph and I, we're part of this too..."

"Nothing's gonna happen to you," Cloud spoke up at last, "None of you. Not if you keep quiet about me being here."

"Smooth, I almost couldn't tell that was a threat."

"Could you _lay off_ , man?" Zack protested, "He's my brother, he's not gonna _do_ anything to you."

"No offense, but you two haven't exactly been best bros in a while, now, have you?" Tidus got up, running his hands through his hair, "What the hell do you know what he's thinking, what he can do if he wants to?"

" _Seriously_ , Tidus?" Zack scoffed, an expression so disingenuous it didn't seem to belong on his face, "What, are you scared, or some..."

Tidus stepped forward, anger evident in his expression, "Hey!" Selphie warned, grabbing onto his arm to stay him, "Keep your heads, both of you."

"If anyone should be scared here, it's you," Tidus nodded over at Zack, "No version of this that ends well, man."

Zack's shoulders slumped, his face working like he really wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words.

"Come on, Selph," she felt Tidus's hand on her arm, "We're gonna be late."

Tidus talking about his attendance was, itself, a joke, but Selphie was gonna let him have it.

"Yeah," she nodded, "Zack are you..."

"Think I'm gonna skip today," he said plainly, giving a look over at Cloud, who was looking at the floor rather than at the three of them.

"Alright," she paused, "if you...if you need anything..."

"Sure,"

Which seemed to be all the response he was going to give her. Her feet heavy, Selphie followed Zack out of the apartment, collecting her bag from the coffee table as she did so.

They were halfway down the stairs before Selphie deemed it safe to speak openly, "You could've gone easier on him."

" _Me_? You were practically telling him to kick his brother out in the street."

"No, I said that's what _I_ would do if it were Wakka."

"And since when was what you would do, _not_ the right thing to do?"

She rolled her eyes, "It's his brother, he knows him better than us."

"He's in some kinda trouble, Selph, you know that. Why else wouldn't he want anyone to know he's here?"

"If he was running from someone, he probably wouldn't go hide at his own place first."

"How do you know?"

"Common sense," Selphie said breezily as they left the building and started down the street to where Tidus had parked.

"Maybe this guy doesn't have any,"

Selphie thought back to Cloud's cold, impersonal stare, the deliberate, painstaking way he chose all his words.

"No...I think he's got a brain in there somewhere. He's like Zack,"

"Didn't see the resemblance."

"No," Selphie shook her head, "They're both smarter than they look."

Tidus didn't look all that convinced, but then Selphie hadn't set out to convince him in the first place.

* * *

The kitchen was warm and suffused with the hissing and snapping of a half dozen stoves working their magic, aided by the surprisingly serendipitous pairing of soul music.

" _The moment I wake up/Before I put on my makeup_..." Tiana walked along the line of heating trays, flicking each valve to medium heat with the littlest twitch of her finger, " _I say a little prayer for you_."

Over by the deep fryers, Aerith chimed in in rejoinder, tossing home fries up and into the oil in a practiced rhythm," _While coming my hair now, and wondering what dress to wear now, I say a little prayer for you_."

It was all Celeste could do not to scream. Every lyric was a gong struck to the inside of her skull, a blow to her ear, each delighted giggle and whoop echoing with an unnatural clangor in her head.

She stood at the cutting board, carefully carving up tomatoes, lettuce, carrots in as uniform a pattern as she could muster, forcing herself to stand in resistance to the heat, the suppressive, smothering heat, the jubilant, girlish noise...

" _Forever and ever, you'll stay in my heart and I will love you. Forever and ever, we never will part, oh, how I love..._ "

"Jeez, at the rate this is goin' I might as well start up a cabaret!" exclaimed Cid, shouldering his way into the kitchen, a wry grin on his face, "You girls are either in prime good spirits, or you're planning a mutiny."

"Why not a little of both?" asked Tiana with a tilt of her head, "'Sides, I thought you were whole hog for the 'singing waitress' thing."

"That's before one of my singing waitresses got herself a crooning gig," he replied with gruff humor.

"I came back, didn't I?" Tiana winked, "Singing doesn't keep the lights on."

"The fun stuff never does," Cid looked over at Celeste, his face crinkling up in a very expression of empathy, "Still, I wouldn't mind it if you'd kick it down a notch or six. You know 'em early birds, hearing aids have them keen as bloodhounds."

Aerith, of course, was immediately apologetic, "Oh, no! I hope we didn't scare anybody off."

Cid shook his head with a sigh, "Nothin' like that just yet." in a not at all subtle attempt at changing the subject, he eyed the heating trays and nodded, "How's it coming?"

"It's coming," said Tiana, still looking skeptical, "School's not here already, is it?"

"Nah. Principal said somethin' about having this all picked up today for tomorrow. Don't know why the couldn't just do it tomorrow for tonight."

"Tomorrow night," Celeste amended softly, eliciting a short snort from Cid, "He's very excited about this assembly of his."

"I think it's a nice idea," said Aerith.

"Well, you would, Princess," pointed out Cid, crossing to lift one cover from a hot plate and sniff approvingly at whatever was inside.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Cid appeared here to be at a loss for words, "You like...nice things,"

"I don't see what's so nice about a bunch of missing high school kids," said Tiana, looking quickly to Celeste, "Sorry."

"Don't be, there is nothing nice about it," Celeste shrugged, "Well, I guess the _gesture's_ supposed to be nice, but..."

"What's it gonna get done, besides give the rest of us more _agida_ to deal with?" Cid patted down his already quite stained apron, "Let me tell ya, I had some pretty things to say to that bony phony that wasn't fit for the workplace," he put on a grand, high voice that sounded really nothing like Principal Skellington's, "' _Well, of course you'd like to pitch in to the effort, working so close with Sora's mother and all!_ ' As if I'm the effing Red Cross. Sorry, Cel..."

But Tiana cut him off, "Wait, we're doing this for _free_?"

"Yeah, yeah, so much for keeping the lights on, get it out now."

"I'm sorry, Cid," Celeste set down the carving knife, "Believe me, I tried to talk him out of it..."

"Not your fault. Guy like him needed to make himself feel useful, so he finds a high horse and gets on it. No one's gonna talk him down."

With a somewhat guilty look on his face, he added, "And I'll...find some way to make it up to you girls, the extra work. Chalk it up to your Christmas bonus."

"We get Christmas bonuses?" asked Aerith.

"You do, now," Cid looked over at Celeste, "Cel, you mind giving me a hand out here? There's a spot on booth four that's giving me conniptions."

 _So much for the boss's boundless charity_ , thought Celeste, but she knew Cid well enough to detect an ulterior motive, "Sure thing." she looked back at the other girls, "You ladies keep your heads, okay?"

"Working on it!" Tiana half sang, though the raised voice was enough to make Celeste flinch all over again.

She followed Cid out into the main restaurant, which was as scantly attended as any Monday morning, their only customers early risers coming in for a coffee and an egg sandwich before taking off for the daily grind.

"There's no stain on booth four, is there?"

"Say it any louder, why don't ya, I don't think the health inspector heard." he leaned against the counter, "You wanna talk, Celeste?"

"Clearly, not as much as you do."

"Look..." he shrugged, "you know I'm not very good at this whole business."

"What? Making the best chicken and waffles this side of St. Louis?"

"You're hilarious, you oughta go do stand up, open up for Tiana's act," he hesitated half a second before saying, "Talking, being in touch with all that thing. But I can tell, Celeste, something's not been right with ya these last few days."

"Well, Cid, I have had a bit of a change in circumstances recently, so..."

"No, no, Cel," Cid waved his hand as if to banish the notion, "I know this whole mess with Sora's been weighing on you. God knows, it'd weigh on anybody."

"Then you understand. Cid, I appreciate your concern, but I'd really rather not talk about..."

"You haven't been well, Celeste," he spoke over her, every word coming out more uncomfortable than the last, "I don't mean that to step on ya, or to make you feel like any less than..."

"Then, what _do_ you mean?" Celeste folded her arms, looking back to the kitchen, "Cid, there's a lot of work that needs to be done, and..."

"And it's work that can get done without you sweating yourself to death over it."

"I'm...I'm sorry?" Celeste asked, unable to repress a scoff, "Are you _firing_ me?"

"No, no, Cel, nothing like that. I'm saying...maybe it's best that you take some time off?"

"We've been over this, Cid, it's not going to happen."

"Celeste, this thing is getting to ya, don't tell me it isn't! You're coming in tired, drained..."

"What, you're my doctor, now?"

"I'm saying, you need rest..."

"You think I haven't _tried_!" she raised her voice, heedless to the two old salts at the corner booth whose heads whirled around at the sound of her voice, "You think I haven't been trying to get some sleep, to rest, to stop thinking about Sora all the time? I _have_ tried. And I can't do it."

She wouldn't add what she thought. That she shouldn't do it, shouldn't try to rest, even if she could. That it wasn't right, taking even a second for herself when her son was gone, lost in some underground snake pit, or flung from the top of a moving train, or whatever the latest horror story suggested.

"Whenever I close my eyes, I see him," she told him, fighting to keep her voice measured, "Scared, alone, in the dark, in _danger,_ it changes every time, and never for the better." she let out a shaky breath, pressing a hand to her mouth, "I stop working, I go home, I try to _rest_..." she spread her arms wide, "What then? More terrible fantasies of my son that won't change anything, that won't make me feel any better, that won't..."

"Hi-ho!"

Celeste turned, letting out a shrill gasp to behold the bespectacled, tweed-clad customer standing at the counter, "Milo."

"Milo?" Cid looked from Celeste to the history teacher.

"Present and accounted for," he grinned, "I'm not...interrupting anything, am I?"

Cid opened his mouth to answer to that, but Celeste spoke first, "No, of course not. You're here for the catering, aren't you?"

"If it's here," the woman beside him looked wryly over the brim of silver-rimmed reading glasses, "And if it can fit in the back of a station wagon."

"We're carpooling," said Milo, pointing from himself to the woman.

"You're the math teacher?" Celeste asked, "She of the deadly Algebra quizzes?"

"My reputation precedes me," she smiled, extending a hand to shake, "Quistis Trepe. You must be Sora's mother."

"Celeste," she returned the handshake, "I was under the impression the PTA would be picking up the..."

"Why dispatch the parents when we're around?" Milo shrugged, "After all, we're already being paid."

"Such as it is," Trepe finished, "And I'm the only one with a trunk big enough for all the food."

Celeste nodded, "Well, you guys have homeroom soon, I bet. I'll go get the..."

"Nah, leave that to me," interrupted Cid, with another surreptitious look between Celeste and Milo, "You three just...er...catch up, eh?"

And he hurried off back to the kitchen. No sooner had this been done did Trepe look anxiously out the window to the street, "Meter maid's parked himself outside my car. Watch, this _would_ be the day I get towed."

"Meter maid?" Milo followed her gaze, squinting, as if the better to spot whoever wasn't there, "Are you..."

"You stay here, I'll deal with it," And, like that, she was gone.

"But I don't understand," said Milo, "There's no meter maid."

"There is not," Celeste sighed, "The suspicious mind would believe they're trying to get us alone together."

"That does sound like Quistis."

"That's a pretty name. Latin?"

"Maybe." he shifted from foot to foot, "Are you...er...are you feeling any better? I mean, your spirits, that is, I can't imagine you _feel_ well, in any case..."

"You imagine correctly," she shrugged, "I've been better. But I'm not...breaking down to pieces in the deep fryer oil, so...baby steps."

"Baby steps," Milo agreed, "It can't possibly be easy. Fixing up food to be served at your son's..."

"What? School assembly? It's not a funeral or anything like that."

"Well..." he bowed his head, flushing, leaving Celeste the uncomfortable feeling that, in Milo's mind, Principal Skellington's hastily thrown together assembly was, indeed, as good as a funeral.

"Twelve trays of wings, six mac and cheeses, eight dishes of home fries, and three, count 'em, three house salads." The kitchen door opened anew, admitting Cid at the head of a tray loaded down with still steaming aluminum trays. Aerith followed shortly behind with a cart of her own.

"Enough to feed a zoo," he finished.

"Or about half our student body," Trepe quipped, entering right on cue, "We'll take it from here."

"We will?" asked Milo, but Trepe had already taken hold of one of the carts, "We will." he moved around to the back of the next one, catching Aerith's eye as he did, "Oh...hello. Again."

"Hi," Aerith smiled, looking a tad sheepish.

"I think I owe you an apology. I might have...come off the wrong way the other night."

"Other night?" Cid asked, sotto voice, but Celeste shushed him.

"I didn't mean to ruin your evening."

"Oh, you didn't ruin it," Aerith laughed lightly, "That was just me being silly, which, believe me, isn't new."

"Oh, really? Could've fooled me, you seem like a very serious person."

"Jesus be an insulin pump," commented Cid, earning a glare from Celeste.

A shrill honking from outside. Milo sighed, "She's right. First bell rings in a half an hour, and we're the sorry souls who straddle the line of anarchy and justice at that place."

He started the cart out of the place, calling over his shoulder, "See you at the assembly!"

"Oh, we'll be there with bells on!" Aerith called back.

"Will we, now?" asked Cid as the door closed behind him.

"Well, I'll have to be," Celeste couldn't resist a little flicker of a smile, "Maybe we could _all_ use the night off tomorrow. For rest, and all."

Cid rolled his eyes with a little audacious laugh, "So, what's the deal with Peewee over there?" he nodded toward the door Milo had rolled out through, "You girls playing him off each other, or what?"

"Oh, please," said Celeste, at the same time as Aerith, "God, Cid, I met the guy twice."

"He certainly remembered you." he looked over at Celeste, "But _you_ were the one yakking it up with him and having a fine old time."

"Yes, because you so subtly bowed out to leave us alone together."

"Gotta say, guy seems like a bit of a drip, but yanno..."

"Yes, well, you enjoy your gossip," Celeste said with a smile, already moving back toward the kitchen, "There's only about a _hundred_ dishes to be washed and it isn't even eight o'clock..."

"Fair point," Aerith chirped in, snapping her fingers as if only just remembering, "We'd better get cracking."

"We'd better," Celeste gave Cid a little wave, following Aerith back into the kitchen where, indeed, the sink was near full to the brim.

Her hand was barely at the tap before a voice called out, interrupting the mercifully banal task.

"Celeste!" Tiana emerged from the open pantry in the back corner, "Got a little something for you."

"I am well aware of the dishes, Tiana, you don't have to worry about..."

"Nothing like that," she held out a thin, grimy envelope. Grungy, and greasy in several places. Celeste could just make out two words, written in a thin black script: ' _Sora's Mother_ '.

"The number of times I get called that, I might as well change my name." she said, though the humor felt forced even to her, "Where'd you find it?"

"Nowhere pleasant."

"Well, I can see that."

"You know the dumpster out back?"

Celeste must have made a face, because Tiana chuckled, "Well, don't waste time thanking me, I only peeled the thing from under the lid."

"I don't understand," Celeste shook her head, "Why would they just leave it in the dumpster?"

"Or not use your name?"

"Unless they don't know it," Celeste took the letter gingerly, wincing at the slick, sticky muck of the paper against her fingers, "But they know I work here, and they know about Sora..."

She could feel Tiana's eyes on her, burning with a unasked, but painfully evident question. Celeste found herself asking it, feeling both a great, renewed hope, and a terrible, crushing dread.

"What if it's from whoever took him?"

* * *

It was a simple thing, a stupid thing. The roaring lion suspended from a thin silver chain. Not really silver, obviously. He'd wondered where she'd gotten it. Well, he hadn't really _wondered_ , but had harbored some secret hope that, if he acted curious, she'd be less likely to huff if he refused to wear the stupid thing.

" _It's got character, mystery,_ sex _appeal_."

" _I wasn't aware we were trying to be sexy_ ,"

Rinoa rolled her eyes, her habitual reaction, " _Sexy never hurts with these guys. They're obsessed with appearances._ _Besides..._ " she chuckled, clasping the chain around his neck, " _Leon the Lionhearted. It's too perfect to pass up._ "

" _Maybe we should pass by the flower shop on the way in, then. Pick up some lilies for your hair._ "

" _Lily the lily-livered_ ," she frowned, " _Doesn't quite have the same ring to it._ "

Which was all the proof Squall needed that she'd just been trying to get him into that necklace.

A light seemed to flicker on overhead. Or maybe it had been flickering for a while, and Squall was only now becoming privy to it. He could almost make out a single, bare bulb, a ring of grimy plaster around it, illuminated like a halo against the darkness everywhere else.

There was a voice somewhere in that dark, weak but irate, "What's going on? Hello? Leon! Leon, dammit, are you there?"

He didn't answer to that name, not anymore. He regretted ever choosing to answer to it in the first place.

What's more, he didn't want to even think about Seifer again. Just to imagine his cocky little smirk, his cross earrings, his silver duster, would beckon some new tragedy, another carefully laid plan dashed to pieces.

" _Hate to admit it,_ " Seifer had groused, cleaning his fingernails with the edge of a knife as they all bent over, panting, in that narrow alley, " _But you pigeon peckers saved my ass._ "

" _Some way to treat your rescuers,_ " Rinoa cocked an eyebrow, " _Or is pigeon pecker a term of endearment where you come from?_ "

" _I get a little potty mouthed when I'm excited_ ," he must have seen Rinoa's smirk, because he just as quickly added, " _But I don't like to cuss with a lady present_."

Leon couldn't keep from rolling his eyes.

" _And who's this one?_ " Seifer looked him up and down, as if just realizing he was there, " _Baby brother?_ "

" _Nothing like that_ ,"

" _Well, shit_." Seifer snapped his fingers, as if disappointed.

And he'd spoken to him, for the first time, " _Name's Leon_."

The groans had gotten louder, even as the light overhead seemed to brighten. Maybe it was just Squall's imagination, maybe none of this real, maybe this was all just some wild fever dream, or a dying dream.

"Leon? Leon, I know you're there!" he almost sounded scared. Good, he deserved it, "Leon, c'mon man, you've got to help me..."

" _What do you have to lose?_ " the question, so smooth, self-assured, he'd been impressed with himself, " _You're being stepped on every day for doing half the work of every other guy here, and you're the guy with the most to lose when the shit hits._ "

" _If_ ," Seifer had amended, though without much conviction, " _Look, Leon, I don't know if you haven't noticed, but I'm not exactly Mr. Popularity around here. Any funny business, and I hit the fan long before the shit ever does._ "

" _You're popular enough. Where it counts._ "

" _That a promise?_ "

Leon shook his head, holding his hand out over the crackling embers of the campfire, " _A pledge_."

And, for the first time since they'd met, Seifer looked at least as impressed with Leon as he'd ever been with Rinoa.

They shook hands.

"Now quiet down, quiet down, now, sonny," a new voice, accompanied by the creaking of rusty hinges, the thud of a door opening and then just as quickly closing, "Enough ruckus around here as it is, these days, the least you can do is keep from adding to it."

"I'll add whatever ruckus I want, you Nosferatu!" Squall had to admit, that one was pretty inspired for Seifer, "What the hell's going on, what are you..."

"Now, hush now, sonny, won't you? My hands are shaking enough since they've shut off the central heating."

It _was_ cold here, now Squall realized. Not a wintery cold, but a still, dark, _dead_ cold. An underground coldness, like a safe, or a tomb.

"Now, if you'd just hold still and keep your head now, sonny, this'll all go by much quicker..."

"Fuck you!" a sharp defiance, Squall had to give Seifer some credit, he supposed. Whatever was going on, he still talked a bigger game than was probably wise.

" _He's still useful_ ," Rinoa had told him, the cold autumn rain dripping from her chestnut hair, " _If we protect him, he'll owe us._ "

" _That's not our job. We're here to expose criminals not convert them._ "

" _He's not_ like _the others!_ " she insisted, balling up her fists at her sides, " _Wasn't that the whole point? We help him take over, get rid of the old guard?_ "

" _To get him to trust us, not be our_ friend _._ "

" _He's good, Squall_ ," she'd practically hissed his real name, looking for a moment unafraid of some third party overhearing, them both being found out, " _He's just some down on his luck kid, trying to make his way in the world..._ "

" _Oh please..._ "

" _You're a lot like him. You know that, I can tell, I can see it when you...when you're together. You just got a little luckier than him._ "

" _What are you, Ri, my psychiatrist?_ "

" _I'm your_ superior _, Squall,_ " her expression had hardened, even as a deeper, raw emotion had crept into her voice, " _If I were you, I'd try not to forget that_."

" _Rinoa, you go back for him, it's all over._ _We've gotten this far, you'll have us both screwed._ "

" _It's not over. I leave him behind to suffer the same way as some professional criminal,_ then _it's over. This job is about more than locking up bad guys, Squall. You remember that._ "

" _Come on..._ " but she'd already climbed onto the back of her bike, gunning the engine, " _Rinoa, for Christ's sake_..."

She'd driven off, down from the Overlook, the rain lashing the sides of her bike, the wind of an oncoming storm in her hair.

" _Rinoa!_ " but the name had been swallowed by the rumble of the bike, fading precipitously from his sight, from his life.

He'd never seen her again.

Squall opened his eyes fully, no longer able to drown out the plaintive screams, the desperate, almost childlike cries, echoing in this small space from a place he knew was close at hand already.

He'd never heard screams like that before. And, one way or another, he could take no satisfaction in hearing them now.

"Now, you'll be out in a moment," that tiny, wheezy voice continued, "Just sit still, you'll feel better for it. Now..."

And a hazy, indistinct outline appeared above Squall. A wizened old face, birdlike eyes peering from behind bifocal lenses. A silver instrument, half illuminated in the light of the dim bulb on the ceiling.

"Who..." he tried to speak, his throat screaming in protest as though being cut up by a dozen tiny razors, "...who _are_..."

"Oh, no one important, sonny, no, no. But _you_...well, you're our last great hope, if I've been hearing correctly. Goodness knows what'll become of our sorry lot now..."

"What do you...what are you going to..."

"Now, hush now, sonny. I'm no slack hand at this, but I'll be needing my concentration all the same. Fellas in the Navy, they used to call me Johnny Corkscrew, that they did..."

Squall was half tempted to ask why, but before he could even muster up the question, the silver instrument was held aloft in the air above him, and then just as rapidly sunk into his chest.

All he knew was a raw, bloodcurdling scream, as the world melted into a mass of red, of white, of black, and he knew nothing but pain.

* * *

 **A/N:** Hope you guys liked it! Chapter 17 will be forthcoming two Fridays from now.

Until then...


	17. Let X Be the Unknown

Chapter 17, Let _X_ Be the Unknown

 **A/N:** Welcome back!

This chapter is one of my favorites. Tea is spilled with abandon, things begin to become clearer, and...well, you'll just have to see.

Enjoy!

* * *

Larxene's knuckles were white on the steering wheel, against the blistery pink of her fingers and, though she couldn't see them, her palms, still sore, though she no longer noticed.

"So what's the plan?" Axel asked from beside her and a thousand miles away all at once, "We storm the place, mow the doors down... I can do a pretty sick spin kick if it comes to that."

"Shut up, Axel."

"Yeah, you can't keep saying that," even though Larxene was making every effort to keep her eye on the road ahead of her, she could tell Axel was looking at her knowingly, one eyebrow cocked in an expression of for once not-entirely stuck up superiority.

"I'm just saying, we can't very well just waltz on into this place and ask for Dem back, no matter how slick your resume is."

"You think I don't know that?" she snapped, "You wanted to come along, Axel, I didn't ask."

"I know you didn't. I'm just saying, we should probably have some kind of game plan, in case things go south. Which, considering this day so far, doesn't seem too far fetched."

Larxene sighed, turning in her seat to regard him, "This might surprise you, but I'm not just going off half-cocked here. I've got a plan."

"Cool, would love to hear it."

She gritted her teeth, "Can you just let me _think,_ okay? For a _minute_?"

"You said you had a plan!

"I _do_!"

"Oh, and I can't know about it? Look, Rex, if you're planning one of those 'exchange of prisoner' deals with Dem and me, I'd like to point out that I'd make a _shit_ hostage, and Dem would totally never forgive you."

She looked at him askance, and Axel sighed, "Sorry." he toyed with his seat belt, worrying some loose threads in the beige stitching.

Larxene was able to enjoy a glorious 45 seconds of comparative quiet before he spoke up again.

"So what's the deal with this place? The Mansion..." he said the word with a mock grandeur, flourishing his hands, "...never heard of it."

"It's part of _X-_ Corp. An off-campus research facility."

"What kind of research?"

Larxene didn't meet his eyes. She had the distinct feeling he was judging her quietly, appraising her. She thought of Demyx, of her insipid, dopey, hippie of a brother. Whenever she tried to imagine him locked in some sterile room, under the harsh, unforgiving glare of fluorescent lights, she was stopped by a sickening lurching in her gut. A feeling of nausea and, more concretely, of guilt.

"You don't know, do you?"

"No, Axel, I don't," she said at length, "I'm just the accountant."

"Senior Financial Assistant." but he clammed up after a harsh glare from her, "Well...they do, like, microchips and stuff, right?"

"Biotech. Prosthetic limbs, artificial intelligence, stuff like that."

"Like robots?"

Larxene sighed, "No, Axel. Not robots."

"I'm just saying, maybe we can figure out what they're doing to Dem at that place..."

There was a sharp screech of rubber on asphalt, a smell of exhaust, and a muffled swear from Axel. Larxene blinked, realizing she'd put on the brakes, stopping them in the middle of the mercifully quiet single-lane road.

"Jeez, Larxene," Axel panted, "you wanted me to shut up, you couldn't just..." he stopped, "...oh."

But Larxene wasn't paying his little realization much mind, "Axel, I work for a multinational conglomerate."

"Fine, I doodle on strangers' for money, we've all got to get by. The point?"

"Just because I work for scientists, doesn't mean Dr. Frankenstein signs my paychecks. They don't experiment on _people_..." she stopped, realizing she was speaking very fast, too fast, she was surprised Axel could keep up.

"You don't sound too sure." she could tell Axel wasn't rubbing it in. Larxene knew him well enough to know that if he _wanted_ to do that, he would've been far from subtle about it.

"Axel..."

"Look, I'm not gonna pretend I know how this highfalutin corporate stuff works, but I'm pretty sure kidnapping people so your suits don't start talking isn't one of those everyday things," he looked her up and down, "Don't forget, they were gonna take _you_ if Boyfriend of the Year hadn't changed their minds."

"I don't need reminding," she paused, biting her lip. In the woods somewhere off the side of the road, a swallow called, its doleful, whooping cry the only sound to be heard.

She'd been thinking a lot, more than Axel seemed willing to give her credit for. Going over memories, even vague recollections in her mind. Financial spreadsheets, conference calls, every dry as dust meeting they'd ever had, looking for clues, tells, any slightest indication there was something wrong, something she should have seen.

What's worse, she was now quite sure that there _had_ been, and she'd simply turned a blind eye.

"Larxene, I'm not trying to...to upset you, or anything," Axel was saying.

"You couldn't upset me if you tried," she said, cold and impersonal.

"Just that I think we're a little out of our depth..."

"Then leave!" she undid the bolts on the car doors, little clicks ensuing from right and left, "Go ahead, I won't stop you."

"That's not why I'm saying it," he sighed, "And if you think I'm gonna just cut and leave on you now..."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

Axel flinched as though struck, "Yeah, well...let me make it up to you, then. And Demyx too."

Larxene ran her fingers along the beaded leather of the dashboard, eyes closed.

"I blamed myself," she said at length, "after you left. Told myself it was all my fault. You and Saix and...everything."

"Rene..."

"Don't," she put the car back in drive, continuing down the road at last, "Don't apologize."

"It was on me. Everything that happened back then, that was all me, Larxene..."

She looked at him, "Maybe, but I didn't have to go along with it. But I told myself it was all for you, that maybe you'd come around and...I dunno, we could be a thing together, or something..."

"I was wrong for how I treated you. Probably not much good saying it now..."

"Least you're saying it," she negotiating another turn onto an even narrower side street, the early afternoon sun all but blotted out by the towering autumnal trees on stone ridges to either side.

"You don't know why I'm telling you this, do you?" she asked him.

"Well, I guess I kinda had it coming..."

"Besides that."

Axel said nothing, short of a drawn out humming noise that seemed to suggest he was thinking really hard about it.

"I promised myself I would never let a guy use me like that again," she said, "That I'd be better than that, that I'd take care of myself, carve out some kinda life of my own. And then Luxia shows up."

"I was...wondering how you ended up with him." he added hastily, "I mean...Dem, he...he had this idea that..."

"That I got with him to get over you?"

"No," Axel shook his head, "to be more comfortable, have a better life. For him."

"He really said that?"

"I know, pretty deep for him, huh?" he smiled uneasily, "Is it true?"

"For all his talk about peace, love and happiness, he's got a pretty high opinion of himself, doesn't he?" she asked, "Guess it runs in the family."

It was no secret, had never been a secret, how Demyx felt about Marluxia. For years, Larxene had told herself he just resented her boyfriend, their new lifestyle, maybe even hated that he had to 'share' his sister, in some petulant little brother type of way.

She'd never assumed he'd been _worried_ about her, or even that Demyx was capable of such pithy adult emotions as 'worry'.

"I got together with Luxia because I wanted to," she explained, "Because he was dashing, and charming and..."

"The complete polar opposite of me in every possible way?'

"Oh, he's like you in a couple of ways. Smooth talker, thinks he's in charge of everything, _loves_ to complain..."

"Kinda losing track of the thread here..."

"...and won't stop at manipulating people he claims to care about to get what he wants," she smirked darkly, "You, at least, had the decency to let me in on it before it was too late."

There was a long silence. The road had begun to slope more and more drastically uphill. Though Larxene's Ford convertible wasn't by any means old, she could hear the axle creaking beneath them.

Axel was sort of creaking too, making a little noise halfway between a laugh and a whimper, "That was pretty badass, you knocking him into the knickknack rack. You had _me_ scared for a second."

"Good," Larxene said simply.

But she couldn't hide the little flicker of adrenaline the memory brought with it. For those fleeting moments, just before and just after she'd attacked Luxia, it had felt like all the anger, all the rage, all the disappointment of the past five years of her life was being exorcised out of her, directed at this single target.

She hadn't felt like herself again, but then, she was less and less sure what 'herself' was supposed to feel like.

"Here we are," she announced, slowing down the car as the wrought iron gate came into view at the crest of the hill, the red slate tiles of the roof just visible beyond it.

"Huh..." mused Axel, "Looks haunted."

"Maybe it is," Larxene slowed the car down just short of the gate, "Hand me my bag, will you?"

Her purse landed in her lap with a casual sloppiness. As Larxene rifled through it, Axel asked, "So...what's the X stand for?"

She looked up briefly to regard the ornate _X_ , formed of two bars in the center of the gate, "It's not an X," she said tiredly, "It's _x_..."

"Key?"

"Greek letter," she plucked Marluxia's I.D from her bag, rolling down the window on her side.

"So why don't they just call it Key Corp?"

"I don't know, Ax, maybe you should ask them." she ran the card under the tiny black box on the brick wall next to the gate. There was a short, but painfully prolonged silence, before a little light on the box flashed green and the gate swung outward, scraping in some places against the gravel of the road.

"Wait, that actually _worked_?" Axel asked, wide-eyed.

"Well, the thing didn't explode in my face, so..."

"I mean, I'm not complaining, but you'd think there'd at least be a rent-a-cop with a naughty magazine or something..."

"We don't have rent-a-cops," said Larxene tiredly, driving on through the gate.

"No?"

"No," she said quietly, at the same time looking up and down the quiet forecourt. On the hill ahead of them, the Mansion loomed: two stories of earth brown bricks, big bay windows, all hidden by drapes. The path up to the front was lined by gray granite columns, encircled by climbing vines.

"Cozy," commented Axel.

"Shut up," Larxene replied automatically.

"Don't tell me you haven't noticed there's no one around?" he indicated the rest of the courtyard around them, "No cars, no security, not even a janitor. It's weird."

"Yeah, it's weird. Shut up." she tilted her head up, the better to make out her face in the rearview mirror, "How's my hair?"

"You're not serious?"

"You're right, you wouldn't know how to answer that anyway."

"What're you gonna do, seduce your way in?"

"I work for these people," she pointed out, tucking a loose strand of hair back into her bun.

"You don't say? You only mentioned it a coupla hundred times."

"If I don't look like I'm here for work, they'll ask questions."

"Yeah, fine, I get it..." he pointed himself, a finger from each hand, "what about me?"

"You wait in the car." she pulled back on the gear, turning off the engine as she did.

" _What?_ "

"One of us should be out here in case something happens."

"In case _what_ happens?"

"Anything."

"Brilliant, Rene, brilliant."

"Look, if you're gonna use a nickname, pick _one_ of them and stick with it." she moved to open the door and get out, but Axel put a hand on her wrist before she could budge the handle.

"Remember the code?"

"So help me God, Axel, if you start reciting the Earthshaker Code of Ethics, I will decorate my fender with your face."

"I'm just saying, if you remember the code..."

She raised her free hand, poising as if to slap him, but Axel used _his_ free hand to stay that too, "...no one man can make the Earth shake on his own."

"Good thing I'm not a man, then."

"Bully for you... _you know what I mean_! Seriously, remember that time when we took Market Street back from the Windmakers?"

"You mean when we pelted the drug store with cat food?"

"It wasn't just a drug store, it was their stronghold!" he blurted, "The _point_ is, strength in numbers."

"I can't just walk you inside, Axel."

"Why not? There's nobody here." a somewhat more somber cast came to his face, "And besides, what if something _does_ happen to you in there? What am I supposed to do, how would I even know..."

"Axel..."

"You're anxious to see the back of me, Rex, I can't blame you. I'd wanna kick me to the curb too, if I were you. But I'm not going anywhere until this is over, and Dem is back to being an everloving pain in your ass."

Larxene crossed her arms, considering him for some time, "When did I ever say I wanted to see the back of you?"

Axel blinked, "You don't?"

"I never said that either," she shrugged, "Fine. You wanna indulge this newfound hero complex of yours, fire away. Just stay close, and don't do anything I didn't tell you to do first."

"Nothing new, then," he winked, opening the door on his side.

They both stood in the forecourt, looking up at the Mansion. A crisp wind blew by, whistling between the pillars alongside the walkway and stirring up fallen leaves from their clumps beneath them.

"Got a weapon?" he asked suddenly.

"What, do you?"

Axel reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a switchblade, smirking cheekily. Larxene sighed, "Of course you do."

"Would've brought a spare, but you know, I kinda left home in a hurry."

"I'll manage," though Larxene did suddenly feel a touch more exposed than she had a minute ago. She supposed in a pinch, these sensible office mules she was wearing could serve as blunt instruments, if she was willing to go about the place in sheer pantyhose afterward.

As they climbed the short flight of stairs to the doors, Axel lifted his hood over his head.

"What're you doing?"

"Disguise. Of my many distinctive features, my hair is the biggest."

"You look stupid, take it off."

"Not the first time I've heard that one..."

"Yes it is," and she yanked the hood down herself, reaching for the door handle as she did so.

There was a grungy bronze plaque on the wall beside the doors, bearing the _X_ -Corp logo (two keys, crossed to form an _X_ , with the sobriquet _Reserare in posterum_ beneath) and the label, ' _Offsite Research- Authorized Staff Only Beyond This Point_ '.

"You're not authorized," pointed out Axel.

"No," she opened the door, "But Luxia was."

The room beyond was spacious, nearly empty, yet somehow musty and claustrophobic as a tomb. Their footsteps clacked off faded parquet tiles. Sunlight wafted in through opaque curtains, partially illuminating faded wall panels and dusty crystal chandeliers.

"You _sure_ this place isn't haunted?" asked Axel, at least having the good sense to speak in a whisper, "You guys could rent it out as a spookhouse for Halloween, make a killing..."

Larxene hushed him with a glare, crossing the room to a spot at the far end, between two parallel staircases, where there was a reception desk, currently unattended.

"There's a guestbook," Axel pointed out, fingering the open ledger on the desktop, "Might be important."

Larxene scanned the scant signatures on the opened page, "Electrician, maintenance, groundskeeping, housekeeping..."

"Hope they're not paying them too much," Axel lifted one finger from the desk to squint at the thick coating of dust he came off with.

"No visitors," Larxene sighed.

"Well, that's helpful."

"It's bogus," she shook her head, "Trying too hard to seem...ordinary, above reproach. The whole thing screams 'paper trail'."

"Who're they trying to fool?"

"Anyone," she looked around, wrapping her arms around herself, though it wasn't cold, "Everyone, I guess."

Axel was walking along the walls, examining the labels on each door as he passed, "Archives, overflow, servers... I dunno, where _would_ you keep a hostage teen idol?"

"Check for padded rooms..." Larxene began dryly, only to trail off, stopping in her tracks, "Axel,"

"Wh..." he turned toward her, but Larxene pressed a finger to her lips before he could say more.

Above them, the ceiling had begun to creak, a deliberate, rhythmic creaking. Footsteps, heavy ones, and getting closer.

Axel tensed at once, eyes widening at her. With a shock, Larxene realized he was deferring to her.

" _Go!_ " she mouthed, " _Hide!_ "

Judging by Axel's wide open mouth and cockeyed expression, he was regretting the deference.

But Larxene wasn't about to argue about the Earthshaker code or whatever other silly excuse he could drum up. Teamwork and trust and all that other jazz was good enough on principle, but she was pretty sure there was _some_ fine print in those stupid rules about self-preservation to the greater end.

The footsteps were on the stairs now. Larxene made a quick, jerking motion with her head, indicating the door nearest Axel. Looking none-too-pleased with this development, he nodded, and ducked behind the door, closing it behind him just as a clear, deep voice made itself known, rebounding off the high ceiling of the room.

"Larxene," a shadow fell over her from above the stair rail, seeming to darken half the room, "I knew I heard someone."

Steeling herself, she turned around to face the towering cinder block of humanity looking down on her from the upstairs landing, "Lexeaus. I didn't think you'd be here."

"Neither did I think you'd be here," Lexeaus scrutinized her through beady eyes, his weather beaten face as impassive and inscrutable as a slab of granite, yet with a gaze as piercing and probing as a hawk's. He continued down the stairs, gloved hands at his sides, boots thunking against the aged wood of the steps like they would break apart if he stood on them too long.

"Luxia," she blurted, instantly regretting it, wishing she'd said something else, taken more time, "Marluxia, I mean. He sent me to pick something up. He's been so scatterbrained lately, since the conference."

Lexeaus nodded curtly, "Not surprising. I'm sure he's had a lot to think about." he got off the bottom step, moving to stand directly in front of her.

 _Keep cool, keep cool, don't give anything away_.

All those business calls, the late nights at the office, the way he'd practically trilled about this new promotion of his. All lies, all manipulations...

And, when confronted, he'd made it sound like it was all for her, all of it, right down to her brother being given up with no one's say in the matter but Luxia's own.

If he really had discovered some internal conspiracy at this place, why hadn't he told her first? Why hadn't he trusted her as much as she'd stupidly, naively trusted him?

"Was that his voice I heard?"

"Wha...what?" Larxene breathed, heart in her mouth.

"The man's voice," Lexeaus craned his neck around to look over his shoulder, muscles rippling, taut against his skin, "You were talking to someone."

"You must've been hearing someone else," Larxene shook her head, "I'm alone..."

"Larxene," he took a step closer to her, which for a man of his size, closed the distance between them instantly. She had no choice but to look up at him, at those unwavering, unrelenting eyes.

"Must we keep at this game? You're smarter than that."

"I...I don't know what you..."

"You're here to see your brother." no inflection, no emphasis, no unspoken threat.

Larxene's first impulse was to lie, to come up with some excuse, get out while she still could. But there was nothing but the wall behind her, and Lexeaus barring her way ahead, holding her in place with nothing but his stare.

"He's here, then," she said at last, "You're keeping him here."

"I'm not keeping anybody anywhere," for the briefest of moments there was something almost like anger in Lexeaus's voice.

"No, but you know where he is," Larxene felt her voice shaking, even as she tried to keep herself calm, "You're a part of this too..."

"And so are you. We're all cogs in the clockwork, Larxene. We turn, we tick, we keep the body alive. Any one cog stops turning, and the others are forced to stop with it. We have no other choice."

"You make us sound like slaves. Nobody's _forcing_ us to do anything."

He was quiet for a short time, "That would depend on where you're standing." he looked around the room, and Larxene felt a stab of worry that he knew Axel was here, that they were both screwed.

"He was very adamant," Lexeaus said at last, "that you not be hurt."

"Demyx?"

"Marluxia. When it was suggested you be...brought in to ensure his silence. Clearly he loves you very much."

"Please," she spat, so venomous even she was taken aback, "If he loved me at all, he wouldn't have given my brother up like it was nothing. If I was ever anything to him, it was a shiny new toy, and Dem was in the way."

"Perhaps. But it is...striking, sometimes. The things we do to protect the ones we care about."

He reached forward, then, taking her arm in a vice grip. Larxene tried to pull back, but to no avail. She wondered if Axel was still close, if he had seen, if he had heard.

If he had any sense, he'd have put as much space as possible between her and him by now. But that was a pretty big 'if'.

Lexeaus started up the stairs, Larxene no choice but to keep at his heels, trying to swallow her fear, turn it into anger, and keep that anger welled up inside.

It was becoming more and more obvious she was going to need it.

* * *

The clouds in Sora's head didn't begin to thin until the music started. The bluish black darkness he'd been struggling to parse through for who knew how long started to lighten, become gray and white, vague outlines of his surroundings taking shape.

" _A candy-colored clown they call the sandman_ ," the thick, syrupy crooner wasn't the only one singing. There was another voice, higher, thinner, considerably less invested, singing along, much closer at hand, " _Tiptoes to my room every night..._ Pass methe pen, won't you? The _pen_ , it's on the table, there."

Another voice, lower, and considerably more measured, answered, "There's five tables, which one?"

"There are _four_ tables, one of them is a counter, you contrarian ingrate."

Either there was no good come back for that one, or the singer's assistant just didn't want to give it.

The blurry outlines around Sora began to solidify, becoming figures. One standing over by a stark white countertop, white like so much else in this room. The other figure, tall, thin and seeming to take up half the space, towered over him, seeming almost to glow from within, with the same weird sterile sheen of the rest of this place.

He accepted something from his assistant with a dismissive, "Hmph!" returning his attention to Sora as he continued singing, " _Into the magic night I softly say/A silent prayer like the dreamers do..._ " he got a little louder, as if ramping up to some big performance, " _Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you..._ "

A light seared into Sora's retinas with all the force of a guided missile, forcing the world to come into stark, painful relief.

"Argh, jeez!" he cried out at the pair of cool gray eyes in a sallow, hungry-looking face positioned directly above him, just beyond the beam of the thin pen-like instrument in the singer's latex clad hand.

"Ah, very good!" the singer exclaimed, "Pupils aren't dilated, shock reactions are quite regular. Make a note of that."

The smaller, slighter figure just behind him looked up from under a lazy, yet still somehow perfectly asymmetrical sweep of steely gray hair, revealing a face that couldn't be that much older than Sora's own, "The pupils or the reactions?"

"Both of them, imbecile!" snapped the older man in ringing tones.

"What the hell is..." Sora began to ask, but was roundly interrupted by his captor, attending physician, or whatever the hell he was sticking a latex-covered finger down his throat.

Gulping panickedly, Sora nearly bit down on the draconian creep's digit, but he withdrew it speedily.

"Gag reflex is working fine, as well. We'll need to wait on the toxicology readings, but a boy this age there's probably nothing zestier than slumber party speed."

"Do we have his blood type?"

"Do we have his blood type," repeated the man with a poisonous derision, rolling his eyes as he looked back at Sora, "Your blood type?"

"You've _got_ to be joking."

"Of course not, nobody knows their blood type anymore. They tattoo it on your wrist in combat zones, makes it easier for transfusions."

"It doesn't matter," said the assistant, "we'll have his blood type in the tox screen."

"Don't patronize me!" he half-shrieked, whipping around to face him, a cascade of waist-length teen idol-blond hair whipping out behind him, "I'm a decorated technician, not some shrinking undergrad fresh out of the free clinic. You'd do well to remember..."

His rant escalated in both pitch and volume, a litany of complaints, insults and sanctimonious whining that very quickly lost any semblance of narrative consistency.

Sora figured he might as well take advantage of this time to get a measure of his newest prison cell, before these people used him for whatever experiment and/or recipe they wanted him for.

The whole room was white and inexpressive. Plain tiles on the wall, ceiling and floors, ringed with formica counter tops, like a doctor's examination room. There were little stainless steel bins on the counters, and glass fronted cabinets undoubtedly filled with all manner of less-than-pleasant instruments. The whole room stank of latex and rubbing alcohol, like an E.R.

His head was still store. Sora raised his hand to assess just how much of his brain had been turned to casserole by Lantern Jawed Giant No.1, only to find that he couldn't move his hands. They were bound to metal rungs with sturdy leather straps, ditto for his ankles. From here, he could see that the tourniquet on his leg had been removed, exposing a nasty, jagged scar that Sora supposed he'd have some great stories to tell about one day, should he make it out of this.

In the process of examining his leg, Sora found he was propped up on a diagonal incline, like a dentist's chair. Trapped.

"Aw, not _again_!" he cried heavenward, not even caring how he sounded, throwing his head back against the too-thin pillow behind him.

"Oh, could you stop that moaning?" his captor was distracted from lecturing his assistant long enough to look back at him, "It's undignified."

"Look, I don't know what this is about and, I'm gonna be honest, I'm kinda past the point of caring. Whatever you guys want, with Riku, or Maleficent, or whatever, I'm not a part of it."

"Well bully for you," his face didn't change at all, still blank yet at the same time annoyingly smug, "I don't know what you expect me to do with that information, but consider it filed for safe keeping..."

"This has _nothing_ to do with me!" Sora's could feel his voice breaking, all the pain, exhaustion and anxiety of the past few days seeming to come bearing down on him at once, "Whatever Maleficent did to piss you off, whatever you want Riku for, I don't care. I'm _done_ being locked up because of what _they_ did."

"What did they do?" asked the assistant from the corner, tapping his pen rhythmically against a thin lower lip.

"Don't encourage the boy, Zexion," he didn't even look his assistant's way as he said his name, pronouncing the word 'boy' as if it were some unpleasant, yet mildly interesting insect, "I'd rather avoid the trip to Conspiracy Corner."

"What do you want from me?" asked Sora, "You can at least tell me, can't you?"

"Well, I suppose I _could_ ," the doctor's eyes shone with a keen intellect, a cold cunning that, for a fleeting moment, was eerily reminiscent of Riku, "But I'm afraid it would fly right over that pointy head of yours. And you've sustained more than enough blunt force trauma for now. There are a fair lot of things you can call me and be correct, but I'm no sadist."

"Is it because of the train?" Sora asked.

"Hooked on Phonics, are we? I've encountered first graders with more savvy."

"And I'm sure you've got their brains nice and fresh in cold storage somewhere, _is it about the train_? The Sunset Line?"

"I think he means the..."

"I know what he means, Zexion!" his nostrils flared, but Zexion only smirked for a fraction of a second as his superior let out a deep breath, as if to compose himself.

"Well, considering you and that train parted ways none-too-gracefully not long before you were found, I suppose so. But correlation rarely equals causation. No, you may be here because of your little adventure in Sin City Subterrania, but you are _here,_ " he pinched Sora's face in his hand again, turning his head to look around the room, "By virtue of a particularly happy little accident."

"Well, you're the only one who looks happy."

"Happiness is a woefully overrated concept. At best it's an illusion, at worst it's a drug." he let go of Sora's cheeks, peeling off the glove he was wearing with the aid of two fingers on his other hand, as if to make any kind of lasting contact with another person would give him the plague.

"There are remarkable things happening here, young man," he said at length, "Like it or not, you're a part of them now."

He tossed the glove into a nearby waste bin, announcing, "I'll be in the lab."

"The tox results won't be in for another hour at least..." began Zexion, but he was drowned out as his boss, partner, taskmaster, whoever, took up his singalong gig again.

" _It's too bad that all these things/Can only happen in my dreams/Only in dreams, in beautiful..._ " he heaved a dramatic breath, spreading his arms as a pair of automatic doors slid open for him to pass through, " _Dreams_!"

And he was gone, warbling off out of sight.

"This is crazy," Sora pointed out unnecessarily, "I was _so_ close...I was finally free, and then..."

"You do have an unfortunate habit, don't you?" asked Zexion, "Getting kidnapped."

Sora looked over at him, still standing there with his clipboard, his pen still poking out over the back of his ear, his one visible eyebrow cocked as if he'd just made some really hilarious joke.

Just what he needed. Another prematurely gray teenager who thought he was hot shit.

"Look," he took a deep breath, forcing himself not to scream, "Zexion, right?"

"That's me."

"You've got to help me!"

"I've got to, now?" he smiled, "Why?"

"I'm guessing common human decency isn't gonna cut it, is it?"

"Listen," he said smoothly, "I do sympathize with you. I do."

"Saying it twice doesn't make me believe it any more, sorry."

"But it's not my call. I wasn't the one that found you, and now that Vexen's seen you..." he shrugged, "I'm just the intern."

Sora sighed, "Vexen? So what's the deal with him? I get the impression he makes pillowcases out of his victims' skin."

"Nothing that interesting," Zexion's eye (well, eyes, presumably, but Sora could only see the one) narrowed, "You really don't know where you are, do you?"

"I've been knocked out a lot lately, so sorry if I don't have the best sense what's going on."

"Well, I can help you there, at least." Zexion crossed to stand directly across from Sora's chair, gesturing around with his clipboard, "You're a guest of _X_ -Corp, the innovator of tomorrow, today."

" _X_ -Corp?" Sora echoed, "The fire alarm guys?"

"One of our many services," Zexion answered simply, "The fact is, Sora, as unfortunate as your situation is, there's nothing you can do about it. And even less that I can."

"But what do they _want_ with me? I don't get it, what's the..."

"You haven't guessed?" he smirked again, "You're the key to everything."

And with that, he turned on his heel and vanished through the automatic doors, leaving Sora alone, stuck and no idea what was happening to him, or even how he'd ended up here.

Again.

* * *

Axel had to give Larxene credit: her plan had gone to shit just as she'd predicted it would, and with all the speed and grace that one would expect of her.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." he panted through thinly parted lips, tripping down the bottom most step and ramming side-first into the wall on stair landing.

"Frick," he added for good measure, looking over his shoulder just to assess that he wasn't being followed, before continuing down the stairs.

Maybe he should have stayed close to the main room, found some place to lay low. Surely there'd been some janitor's closet or gross office bathroom or something he could have ducked into while Larxene dealt with Mystery Colleague.

But Axel had never been one for staying in one place, as Larxene herself would no doubt have reminded him. Besides, it was probably best if he put as much space as possible between him and her, the better for plausible deniability.

" _No, I've never seen this man before_ ," he could almost hear her now, " _But he sure looks like a character, doesn't he? And my, how he smells!_ "

He wouldn't blame her if it came to that, though, he supposed. He'd been expecting it since the moment he'd started squatting in her house, and those circumstances had been considerably less fudged than these.

There had to be _some_ place to hide, Axel reasoned, looking up and down the hallway that opened up at the bottom of the stairs. Blank, gray walls, white tiles, shitty fluorescent lights spaced an unreasonable distance away from each other. Quite a contrast against the musty, yet cozy mansion upstairs.

Axel still didn't understand the impulse in picking an abandoned country pile to house your illegitimate corporate offshoot, but he was starting to get the impression this wasn't one of those ordinary 9-5 office environments.

"Locked, locked, locked," Axel repeated the word, trying each door he came across along the way, "locked, locked, lock..." the second to last door on the right gave a bit as he touched it, swinging inward, "Bathroom."

"I won't pretend to have any idea what you were thinking..." came a stringent, ringing voice from somewhere close by.

Shit.

Axel wasted no time, he ducked into the cramped, one-stall bathroom at once, holding the door shut behind him.

"The boy had seen too much," a deeper, weirdly accented voice responded as two sets of footsteps, one light, one thunderously heavy, became apparent in the hallway outside, "It was either kill him or bring him here."

"I daresay you were Devil's Advocate this time around?"

"Lexeaus wasn't overfond of killing the boy."

"No, he's developed a certain soft spot lately, as it comes to adolescent upstarts." the higher voice made a little harrumphing noise, "Well, our noblest actions are often borne of ignorance. You were right to bring him here, more right than you know."

"You can use him?"

"More than that!" there was a giddy, musical tone to the voice, like he might just burst into song, "He's a match."

The footsteps stopped. Axel shrank back, nearly tripping over the base of the toilet, though he caught himself in time. There was an air vent on the wall just above the sink, the milky light of the fluorescent bulbs wafting in through the slits. The voices were louder through it, so these two unscrupulous colleagues must have moved into that room.

The bigger guy (Axel figured he had to be the bigger one, given the vent seemed to shake whenever he spoke) didn't seem entirely surprised by his tinier compatriot's little discovery.

"You've told the Superior?"

"What measure of remedial do you take me for?" Axel heard an imperious clicking noise, and imagined this guy sucking his teeth and tossing his head like a bratty tweeny bopper, "The man's so obsessed with his little pet project, I daresay he even remembers the..."

"So that's it, then? You lie to him?"

"Why not? You do it on a regular basis."

"But you're not me."

"And a fine thing, too." there was a short silence, "But I have your confidence in this? No one knows about the boy until I give the all clear."

"And what's the all clear?"

"This is delicate work, as I am sure I don't need to remind you," the voice was terse, sounding out every word as if he were speaking to a child, and not a very bright one at that, "The slightest misstep, and we're back several polygons beneath square one. It took this long for a match to just fall into our laps, I'm not keen on waiting for any more miracles."

"And if it works?" it sounded both like a question and a warning, "What then?"

"Then this miracle will simply be the first of many. And you'll have been an agent in that coming to pass. Let that be enough, yes?"

He got no reply to this. Axel heard the creaking of a door opening, followed by light footfall receding down the hall. There was a short intake of breath, some rustling as of papers being shuffled. The big guy didn't seem intent on going anyplace anytime soon.

Axel lowered himself from the vent, trying his damnedest to keep breathing to a minimum, not that this pleasantly befouled lavatory was making that difficult.

They were talking about a boy, one they hadn't meant to get their hands on but as of now, apparently, the answer to all their problems.

If Marluxia's weepy, considerably squeezed out confession was to be taken at face value, Demyx wasn't even supposed to have been taken by these people. They'd wanted Larxene first, but that had apparently been too rough on Luxia's delicate sensibilities.

And a match...for what? Axel doubted illegal organ harvesters shrouded themselves in this degree of secrecy, but he had to admit, this whole fiasco ending in a battle over unregistered kidneys would be very much on brand for him.

He wondered where Larxene was now, if she'd given him up, or if she'd even been found out in the first place. She was pretty good at lying, Axel knew that firsthand. She could've gone into acting post-hooligan, if she hadn't been swept off her feet by the allures of number crunching.

Well, one thing or another, he was still stuck down here, no idea where to go or what was going on, with at least one, likely two, people that needed saving.

Maybe Larxene had a point before, talking about his hero complex. He wouldn't even be in this situation now, would he, if he hadn't felt the impulse to break Riku out of jail which, come to think of it, hadn't ended that well for Riku either.

Then again, if he hadn't done that, then what would have happened here? Marluxia would still have arranged Demyx's kidnapping, and Larxene...

Would she have ever found him out? Maybe, probably, eventually, she wasn't stupid. But she _was_ proud, too proud to admit when she'd made a mistake. And who else but Axel to point that kind of thing out?

So maybe it was good that he'd been an impulsive idiot and dashed Larxene's life as she knew it to pieces. At least this once.

"Keep telling yourself that sport," he told himself, nudging open the bathroom door, looking both ways to make sure he was alone, and taking off, to parts unknown yet again.

* * *

Riku had gotten used to the opera music, even if he would never understand it. It hung in the still, dusty air of the Hollow, pulsing with a life of its own. A sad life, sad and old, but angry too. And alert.

He felt the faded velvet under the soles of his boots as he descended the once-grand staircase. Had it really only been three nights ago that he'd last gone down these stairs, behind Jafar and Cruella?

And now they were dead. Dead and forgotten in the Underworld, killed for helping him, or betraying him, or both, Riku still wasn't entirely sure.

And he was here again. Alive but imprisoned. That seemed to be his routine now, moving from one prison to another. Being rescued from it, screwing up, getting locked up again. By now, he supposed, any remaining would-be saviors would've wised up and figured he was a lost cause.

He couldn't blame them.

His head still ached, the ringing in his temples seeming almost to move in rhythm with the music. Maybe that was the idea. Riku wouldn't put it past her. After all, she _was_ supposed to be a witch.

"Riku," on her lips, his name sounded like a prayer, hushed, reverent, even a little guilty.

"Maleficent," he stood in the entrance to the drawing room, directly across from her perch by the fireplace, as if she hadn't moved at all since the last time he'd seen her.

She sat there, shrouded in shadow from the curtained windows, slender fingers stroking the back of Diablo on her shoulder. The raven's eye glinted gold, scrutinizing Riku as if wondering if he might make a good snack.

"I owe you an apology," she said at length, "several."

"You can save them," Riku would have been surprised by the boldness in his own voice, had he the presence of mind, even the patience, for surprise, "I'd prefer an explanation."

"And you'll have one." with her free hand she beckoned him closer, "I regret, I have yet again indulged my original sin."

"Original sin?"

"We all have one. A fatal flaw, a vice, some inner darkness that manifests itself within us in life's more trying times. These sins are sometimes our greatest strengths, just different sides of them. Mine is like that."

"Talking in riddles?" Riku asked flatly. Maleficent smiled thinly, "Independence. I have accomplished much in this life on my own, Riku. There were those who thought I'd fade away, forgotten, while other men picked up my work and went on to greatness. But I proved those men wrong. At a cost, perhaps, but the gains outweighed those costs."

She craned her neck, as if to examine Riku from a new angle, "But that independent streak of mine is as much poison as it is cure. I have a woeful habit of keeping things to myself, of keeping others out of my plans, out of my life. If anything, Riku, you learned that tack from me."

"And what am I keeping to myself?" but Riku was afraid he already knew the answer.

"How long have you been in love with that boy?" her eyes were as stony and bright as Diablo's, though her voice was never louder than a whisper.

Riku looked away, feeling goosebumps on his arms. The room, cold and drafty like the rest of the house, suddenly began to feel suppressive, stuffy.

"I'm not in love with anyone."

"Don't lie to me," for the first time there was a bit of bite in her words, "And don't presume I needed Pete to tell me about your heartrending confession. I know what love looks like, child. I have seen its affliction many times, its desperation, its yearning, its long, doleful despair. You love this boy. I will not presume to know why, but you do, and this yearning for him has nearly killed you more than once."

"Shut up," Riku warned her, though he wasn't sure he could do anything to her that would make her stop, would make any difference, "You weren't there. You can pretend to know me all you want, Maleficent, but you were never there for me. You have _no_ idea what it was like, how lonely it was, how lonely _I_ was..."

"Perhaps not. But I have explained to you, I kept my distance..."

"To protect me. Fine, whatever. Why bother adopting me then? I've already considered the tax write-off thing, and it doesn't seem like your style."

"You would not have been safe living with me, Riku. If these last days have taught you anything, it is that my enemies..."

"Your enemies. Hades and his people? I don't know what kinda business you were in together, but let me tell you, he _really_ hates you."

"Hades does not hate me, Riku. He resents me. Anything he has done to you, any violence he may have committed against any of my people..."

"You know about Jafar? He seemed convinced Cruella was behind that one."

"If she was, it was only because she was as poisoned against me as he was. Hades did not build his seedy empire on his own back, whatever boasts he might make to the contrary. His kingdom was an inherited one, an inheritance _I_ helped him acquire. The Underworld, the Coliseum, the Styx and Stones, all of it, it would all be a distant memory but for my help."

"Real contribution to society, you must be proud."

"It was never a matter of pride. To attain any level of influence in this world, Riku, we must often dirty our hands. Hades claims to understand the importance of honor, of keeping an oath, holding up a bargain, but he is only a manipulator and a showman. He thought he could take advantage of my honesty, use it against me."

"The girls." Riku moved forward, earning a sharp croak from Diablo, as if warning him from coming too close to the chair. He took another step forward anyway; the bird ruffled its feathers.

"Cruella kept dropping hints about one of them. Jafar's assistant, she made it sound like you'd jumped through some hoops to make sure she got out of his way."

"Congressman Ahmed's daughter," Maleficent sighed, "There were rumors the girl was giving interviews to reporters, threatening to expose her dark dalliance with Jafar."

"So you got her out of the way? What, you couldn't find another lawyer?"

"Jafar was valuable to me."

"You mean he knew too much about you."

Maleficent neither confirmed nor denied, but a smile flickered on her face at that, "Regardless of what you may think of me, Riku, I am no monster. Just someone who knows what has to be done, and has the mettle to do it."

"The other girls, then. Seifer..." he paused, considered explaining who Seifer was, but decided Maleficent either already knew or that it didn't matter anyway in the long and short of things, "...Seifer admitted he was the one who took Kairi, and I'm pretty sure he took the others too, but..."

"...why didn't you find them in the Underworld? That's easy enough. They weren't there, and indeed never were."

Riku thought back to Ariel, the frightened but surprisingly plucky Beautiful Soul who'd helped him escape the Grotto but who he hadn't been able to rescue from the Underworld. Seifer had wanted her too, but for what or for who Riku wasn't sure.

He'd wondered more than once what had happened to Seifer and Squall Leonhart after that chaos in the Coliseum, even if he couldn't bring himself to worry too much about them.

"But you said..."

"My influence expands beyond the Underworld, Riku. As do my enemies," she got to her feet, a rustle of shawls and scarves. Diablo quorked irately, fluttering over to his tarnished brass post by the mantelpiece.

"But you will believe me when I tell you, I had nothing to do with the abduction of your little red-haired girl. Only Jafar's ill-advised liaison."

"But you know who is behind it. You just haven't told anybody..."

"Stop for a moment, Riku, and ask yourself a question," she stood over him, a giantess made of silk and velvet, "Why do you care about this girl, this Kairi of yours?"

"What the hell is that even supposed to mean?"

"Only what I said. You so detest my riddles, as you call them, so I've dispensed with them."

Riku considered several replies to the question, the harsh recollection of Kairi at the Overlook, the way she'd looked at him, like a creature to be scorned and pitied all at once. He hadn't been sure how angry she was at him at the time, but more and more lately, he'd begun to suspect she may have been most angry at herself.

"She was innocent."

"Oh, indeed? That can't be all."

"It..." but Riku stopped, finding himself unable to look from Maleficent's eyes, "Because Sora loved her. He does love her."

"And that upsets you? Come, we _are_ being honest with each other, aren't we?"

"It doesn't matter. How I feel about Sora. It never did."

"You want to save her, just as you want to save Sora. Perhaps you think Sora will look past her and see you, truly see you, if you become a hero." she chuckled, "This is no world for heroes, child. Heroes exist to be outmatched or corrupted, and neither road is a happy one."

"I'm not trying to be a hero, I'm trying to fix where I fucked up."

"There's nothing to fix. Riku, you have an alarming tendency to saddle yourself with the blame for every indignity, every misfortune that occurs around you..."

"I've heard it before, I don't need to hear it from you."

"You carry a guilt with you so deep within that it consumes every decision you make. I look at you, and sometimes all I see is regret and remorse for sins that long predate you."

She looked up and down the length of his body, reaching out as if to take his hand. Riku pulled back, but she caught him all the same. Her hand, cold, thin, yet remarkably strong, tight as a vice around his wrist.

"What is Sora to you, Riku? Perhaps not someone to save, but someone to save _you_?"

"Let go of me."

"He is, after all, so ordinary, yet so...full of life. And simple. Yes for one such as you, simplicity must be an inherent need..."

"What are you _talking_ about?"

"I am only answering your questions, Riku," her whispers were harsh as scratches against his skin, "You want to know where the girls are, I want to know why you care."

She was quiet for another brief moment before adding, "Think about it. I think the answer will teach you more about yourself than I ever could."

Maleficent turned around, moving over to stand by the fireplace, "Alice Kingsleigh, Cynthia Tremaine, Isabelle Rousseau, Jasmine Ahmed, Bianca de Nevada...and your Kairi. They were all taken by the same people, to the same place, for the same purposes. It is true that I...offered them Jasmine Ahmed to protect Jafar's integrity, such as it was. But the others..."

"I get it. You're only responsible for ruining _one_ woman's life, the other five were totally out of your hands. Who has them, where are they?"

"Other business associates of mine."

"What kind of business?"

"The business of unlocking the future. Or so they claim."

Riku cocked an eyebrow, " _X_ -Corp? They make...hospital supplies, don't they?"

"One of their many ventures. But truly they are in the business of collecting information, copying it, storing it, transferring it. I was on their Board of Directors for many years, prior to a professional disagreement that convinced me the company was losing its way under the current management."

"The current management..." Riku began, a slow, sick feeling coming over him.

"Ansem the Wise, they called him," Maleficent tittered, "Kairi's grandfather, long since departed."

"But..." Riku forced himself to think past the ever-increasing pounding in his head, "...but, then, why would they kidnap Kairi? She's the founder's grand..."

"I never said the company regained itself under _this_ current management, either. I don't profess to know why they do anything, only that they did. I cut my public ties with _X-_ Corp long before Kairi was ever thought of."

She was quiet for a while, as if even this quick flurry of new information was too much, "I left the board after a disagreement between Ansem and his founding partner. Ansem desired the company to move in one direction, his partner, another. It was a matter of which man had the most vision, and the courage to carry it out. The choice was not difficult."

"This partner... What was he, a scientist?"

"He was a genius, an artist, an innovator and, quite predictability, a lunatic," there was a bit of contempt in her voice as she said that last word, yet her eyes shone with something almost like admiration, "Xehanort."

"So you partnered up with him," Riku turned away, thinking, "set it up so he could do more work, for you. But secretly. Built him a...a lab, or something." he turned back to her, "So you call in a favor from your friend Hades."

"Astute."

"I had a hunch," Riku reached into his pocket and, after a little digging, produced the crumpled up bit of notepaper he'd found in the drawer of Sora's so-called 'test kitchen' beneath the train tracks.

"' _June 3_ _rd,_ _,_ " Riku read, " _Subject's mood has improved considerably. Undoubtedly attributed to reintroduction of the Girl._ " he paused, looking Maleficent right in the face, " _Miss M and her little gifts! This one might pay off more than she thought._ "

He tossed the paper down onto the coffee table, "They're research notes. He writes about giving this 'subject' hormones and shock treatments and a bunch of other things I can barely pronounce. Then he tosses in some 'girl' from God knows where and that's all he wrote."

Maleficent smiled, "You found the lab, then. And here I thought I had cleaned the place out."

"Who was the subject?"

Maleficent arched a pencil-thin eyebrow, "Who was the subject, not what Xehanort was doing to him?"

"Well, that too, but..."

"Oh, Riku..." she shook her head, a ghost of a laugh on her lips, "He was a young man, about your age, maybe a little older. He came to me looking for a job."

"And you pointed him to your private mad scientist?"

"Hardly. He was my groundskeeper for a time. And a very good groundskeeper, too."

Slow and slimy, Cruella's words oozed back into Riku's mind, as if they were still sitting side by side on his bed upstairs, " _A bit less mold in those days, and the hedges were better taken care of, but not much else has changed._ "

"Your niece's birthday party."

"You remember the ghost story. I can't fault you for it, it _is_ as close to celebrity as I've ever been able to attain." she let Diablo nip fiercely at her fingers, though she didn't flinch at all as she looked at Riku, "Aurora, the light of my sister's life for nine precious months, before she came into the world and took my sister out of it."

"She died in her sleep."

"So she did."

The room had gone from dry to stuffy to freezing. Riku's breath was short in his lungs, "T-the groundskeeper?"

"He protested, of course, when I brought the proposal to him. How could he ever hurt such a dear, innocent girl, one who had never harmed a soul? She was in love with him, insipid creature that she was. Her godmothers kept her so cloistered, he was probably the first man she'd ever seen. Yes...he was very reluctant. But he gave in, eventually, when I suggested his fiancee back home might soon find pictures of a certain kiss that took place among my rose bushes some short days previously."

"You...you made him kill her?"

"A certain strand of poison, mixed from mountain rose and holly berry. Xehanort may have been what he was, but he wasn't the only one with a talent for mixing nightmares out of nothing. And he was so nervous, wracked with guilt before he'd even begun. I placated him. He had, after all, already stolen her heart. Why not her life?" her lips parted, showing a rare flash of teeth.

Riku didn't think he'd ever seen Maleficent look so happy, "He administered the poison with a kiss. I am sure she went to bed that night thinking she was the luckiest girl in the world."

"You...manipulated him into killing your own niece, just so you could inherit her money?"

"It was more than money," she said sharply, "One day, Riku, you will understand that. I had worked for years, gave my own blood to restore the empire my father created to some semblance of its former glory. All my sister did was give our father a grandchild. Imagine which daughter was the favored one?"

Standing there, in the dim light, eyes piercing, even watery, voice shaken with the force of emotions that had been pinned in for years and years, Maleficent almost seemed pitiable. But Riku could muster no pity for her. He felt his hands shaking, his throat suddenly dry.

He imagined a beautiful girl, blond and blue eyed, wandering down the garden lanes outside the Hollow, greener then than they ever were now. A man, maybe his age, but not really. Taller, stronger, bolder.

He imagined a kiss, and what that might feel like, to be that lovestruck teenage girl, believing all her dreams were coming true. And then he imagined the old woman perched in the window above, watching everything and thinking only of how she could destroy what she saw to better herself.

"They never suspected him, of course, that was part of the arrangement," Maleficent continued, "And afterward, Pete delivered him neatly into Xehanort's hands." her expression indicated that was all she was going to say on the matter.

Riku felt his stomach lurch, his knees almost buckled. Maybe his hurt side acting up again, he couldn't tell.

"You...you tricked him."

"Xehanort needed a subject. I needed what remained of my family legacy restored to me. I saw an opportunity to accomplish both goals, for him and I."

"So...the hormones, the electrodes, the _meat locker_ prison cell..." Riku could feel something rawer than anger, fresher, fiercer, boiling up inside him, "What was it for? What was Xehanort doing to him?"

"I don't pretend to understand the specifics. He kept his secrets almost as well as I keep mine. Almost." she petted the raven's head, the mournful smile returning to her face, "Xehanort had discovered a cure for humanity's most common ailment."

"The flu?"

"Death. At _X_ -Corp, he and Ansem developed an algorithm that they believed proved the existence of a physical human soul."

"The soul?" Riku asked weakly, "You mean like...a ghost?"

"Nothing so pedestrian. A soul, Riku. _Animus_ , the essence of identity, that which separates man from beast. Thought, memory, capacity to feel, to hurt, to love." she sighed, "Xehanort believed that there was a way to encode the human soul into data, preserve it, and then, at some point, transfer it into the same or a new vessel."

She began to pace, as if reinvigorated with new energy, her voice ringing off the walls, as she moved around Riku, seeming to fence him into an ever shrinking circle, "Imagine memories, skills, lessons, achievements, disappointments... All that makes up a full, complete life, moved from one, decaying shell into a fresher, younger one. Ready to live a second life, with all the experience of a first."

Riku had to admit, it sounded like a pretty good deal, all things considered. But the increasing note of mixed jubilation and hysteria in Maleficent's voice was enough to convince him that this was a far grimmer notion than it at first appeared.

"Ansem and Xehanort disagreed on putting their discovery into practice. Those two were fated to clash eventually. One's ego too big for his skull and the other's mind too narrow to process anything beyond his own two eyes. So Xehanort left, and I followed."

"And you gave him his subject."

"Not in such close concert, but yes." she stopped in her pacing, letting out a long, thin breath, "And then his dear beloved fiancee came to my doorstep, looking for her one true love."

"The Girl..." Riku almost choked the words out, "You locked her up, too?"

"Don't look so scandalized, it was a mercy. She would never have seen him again if I hadn't had her taken to that lab," she paused for half a moment and then added, in a different sort of voice, "And she was a lovely girl. Pretty, bright, possessed of an uncommon grace. I'm sure they made a handsome couple."

"You...you practically killed her yourself," and Riku felt hot tears on his cheeks, this surge of emotion seeming to wash over every part of his body, consuming him in a sorrow, a guilt, a rage he couldn't begin to understand.

"Oh, she's not dead," Maleficent said with a detached calm, "Though I suppose sometimes she wishes she were."

And Riku felt the answer fall into place, like the last piece of some grotesque puzzle, "Bluebird." he rasped through tears, remembering her hysterical fear, curled up on that bed, repeating, " _No, no, no_..." at the very suggestion of rescue.

"Is that what Hades calls her now? Her real name is no less quaint."

"She doesn't even know who she is. Hades has her locked up in this...bedroom, and he just walks in and _rapes_ her whenever he wants..."

"Riku, I have said it once before, I have never defended Hades or any of his operations..."

"What did he do to her? Xehanort, what did the experiments..."

"Experiments?" she smiled again, "Child, there were no experiments, not on her. That sorry lot fell to her fiance. It was he Xehanort chose as his successor."

"Successor..."

"I felt like a fool at the time, not realizing it sooner. Xehanort was dying, and had been for some time. This subject he so urgently needed was for him, so he would not die when the rest of his body did. If I'd known then, the girl would never have set foot in that lab..."

"What happened?" Riku asked, jolting forward, stopping Maleficent in her tracks before she could get back to her pacing, "The subject? _What happened to him_?"

And Maleficent answered, in a hushed voice, that tiny, ghostly smile still on her face, "Oh, my child, I think you know that already."

And Riku's head exploded, a horrible, nightmarish pain pressing at the sides of his skull. He let out a cry, pressing his hands to his temples, squeezing his eyes shut as if that might end it, might fix everything, make everything normal.

 _What's happening to me?_

There was something within him, as if someone had pulled some switch and unlocked some dormant energy that had been lurking, latent, in parts of him that he'd never known about.

As if from miles away, Maleficent was still talking, "I didn't return to the lab until after Xehanort had died. I expected to have found the both of them dead, wasted away. But you always had a certain stubborn strength, didn't you, Terra?"

" _Shut up_!" Riku forced his eyes open, only to find Bluebird before him, bent down on a grimy cement floor, raven black hair, not cobalt, plastered to her forehead with sweat and grime.

" _Please, please, Terra, don't!_ " she begged, back up against the wall, arms stretched out in front of her, " _It's not you, Terra. It's not_ you _!_ "

Riku looked down at himself, at his hands. But they weren't his hands. They were darker, harder, stronger. The hands of someone who worked long hours under the sun.

And he didn't _feel_ like himself. The pain in his head was unbearable, a rage fit to consume his entire being coursing through him like a physical force.

" _Terra, please!_ " begged Aqua, tears shining on her porcelain cheeks.

That was her. Aqua, not Bluebird. His fiancee. But not _his_ fiancee.

"You have no idea how long I've waited for this day," Maleficent's voice came to him as if from a thousand miles away, "The fruits of our labors, given life at last. You see now, don't you? You understand your gift? You are not one man, Riku..."

" _Stop it_!" but he wasn't sure who was demanding it anymore, it didn't even sound like his voice. He heard a whoosh of movement, a strangled yelp, and now Aqua was pinned against the wall before him, his hand closed around her neck.

" _Terra...please_..." she begged, " _I know you can hear me._ "

He looked down the length of her body, her grimy hospital gown, her bare feet. Her stomach seemed to almost brush against his own.

Her stomach...

Maleficent's voice again, fainter, more strained, "You...are three."

" _What did you_ do _?_ " he cried in a voice he no longer recognized.

"Nothing you didn't set in motion first."

He heard a distinct clicking noise and whirled his head around, just in time to see Maleficent standing in the doorway before she pulled the trigger.

There was a bang, a cry, a thud, and a horrible crunching noise. A blinding flash went up around him, the world seemed to tip under his feet, his head seemed fit to collapse in on itself...

And then the pain stopped. Riku opened his eyes again, and found two big, bugged out eyes staring back. Maleficent, her neck still held loosely in Riku's hand.

His breath was heavy in his lungs, his whole body shaking. Slowly, as if in a dream, Riku let go of the old woman's neck, and watched it droop to the side with a sickening ease, as if it hanging off a broken hinge.

Riku fell back, falling over onto the coffee table, dry, wordless gasps escaping him as the woman who had been his captor, his puppet-master and the closest thing to a mother he had, slid slowly down the length of her faded floral wallpaper to collapse in a broken heap on the floor.

Diablo let out a cry, fluttering down from his perch to land on his mistresses' shoulder. He began to peck at her, though whether in a futile attempt to wake her or in a hasty attempt to eat her, Riku didn't know.

Riku lifted his hands to his face. They were his hands, he knew that. But they didn't feel like his hands.

Nothing felt like him.

He looked up, back across at the old woman's body, and felt his whole body wracked with a hideous lurch. He bent over on the floor, convulsing violently, tasting puke at the back of his throat, but never seeing it.

It was some time before he realized the opera music had stopped playing, and a little time after that when a shadow fell over him in the doorway.

"Holy Jesus, Mother and Joseph. You...what did you _do..."_

Riku had no answer to that. But some part of him, maybe that same part that had been opened in him today, knew that the answer was nothing good.

He lifted his hands again, his hands, but not his hands, turned to face Pete in the doorway and, feeling both completely powerless and stronger than he ever had in his life, clenched his hands into fists.

* * *

 **A/N:** That last scene was one of the most fun and the hardest to write. It's not supposed to answer _all_ your questions, and it probably added several more. But I hope it was sufficient in conveying all I wanted it to.

Chapters 17 and 18 share the 'afternoon' time frame, so expect 18 next Friday!

Until then...


	18. Friends Fair Weathered and Fire-Forged

Chapter 18, Friends Fairweathered and Fire Forged

 **A/N:** So this update is a day late... Finishing college is great, except for all the work that comes with it.

But, hey, I've been _much_ later, so...

This chapter is a shorter one. It also takes place on Monday afternoon, but it does also continue some of the characters from Chapter 17, so it isn't strictly parallel with it. Rules are made to be broken, what can I say?

* * *

Celeste supposed there were worse tortures in the world, but there was a certain air of doom that came with sitting in an overheated auditorium, listening to a resuscitated mummy play showtunes on a piano older than Amadeus, all while a 6'10 beanpole performed pirouettes and spin kicks to illustrate points only he was capable of understanding.

"More _passion,_ Selphie!" Principal Skellington exclaimed, hands outstretched, "We need to _hear_ your yearning, your sorrow, your _hope_!"

On stage, Selphie nodded frantically, adjusting the microphone so the cord as looped neatly off to her side instead of lying haphazardly between her feet.

"Should I...should I start again?"

"If you like," Ms. Trepe the Math teacher looked over the rim of her reading glasses, adjusting the pen behind her ear, "But we've got three other acts waiting..."

Which was all the impetus Selphie needed to get back to it.

" _Don't you know that you're my hero?_ " she belted out, in a considerably shriekier approximation of Bette Midler, " _You're everything I ever hoped to beeeeeeee! I can't go on without you... You are the wind beneath my..._ "

"No!" Skellington exclaimed, dropping to one bony knee before the stage, "No, no, it's all wrong!"

"It...it is?" Selphie squeaked.

"Your talent can only get you so far, Selphie! Art isn't about just doing something well, we need to _feel_ the artist, their joys and their sorrows! _Then_ , and only then, have we truly made something special. We must share in your _pain_!"

"Must we now?" came a new, but already quite tired voice.

Celeste looked over her shoulder and smiled, "He's had her run through the song from top to bottom three times. I don't know why he doesn't just give her an act and put her out of her misery."

"Not melodramatic enough," sniffed Amphitrite, foisting her handbag into the arms of an unsuspecting Zack, who teetered unsteadily on his feet as she lowered herself methodically into the nearest folding chair, "You'd think they'd at least have _cushions_ for sitting in. I pay taxes for a reason..."

"Are you doing an act?" Celeste asked in a bid to change the subject, sitting down beside her.

"Me? Heavens no, I thought the point of this circus was to make you and I feel better."

"Well, to make _everyone_ feel better," but Celeste couldn't bring herself to sound too convinced in that prospect, "I'm doing an act. Well, not an act...a...a little speech. About Sora."

"Brave of you," she snatched her purse from Zack's lap and retrieved her violet knitting, which she got to work at at once. Celeste noted that she'd made some significant progress on the thing since that day at the police station.

"I suppose so. The principal, he seemed very gung ho about it, I figured there was no point in putting up a fight."

"Oh, there's often a lot of point putting up a fight," Amphitrite nodded sagely, "Even if you lose, you at least stood for something."

As usual, Celeste wasn't sure if the old woman meant that as an insult or an observation, so she let it pass. She looked past Amphitrite to the messy haired eager beaver on her other side, sitting with his head down and his hands clasped in his lap.

"Hello, Zack," she greeted him pleasant.

"Oh...um. Hi, Sora's Mom." he looked at her for about half a second before returning to his lap.

"Zacharias has been feeling unwell today," Amphitrite explained for him, "The suspicious mind would wonder why this coincides perfectly with the first time I ever _ask_ him to escort me someplace. But he remains nothing if not dutiful."

There was a poignant pause that lasted approximately a quarter of a minute before Amphitrite prompted, a little louder, "Zacharias?"

"Huh?" he looked up and around, giving Celeste a winning view of the dark shadows under his eyes, "Oh yeah, yep. Dutiful. Full of duty, uh-huh."

"This has been taking a toll on him," Amphitrite told Celeste, not bothering to lower her voice at all.

"Well, he's...not alone in that," Celeste smiled charitably at Zack, though he didn't seem to notice.

"You went back to work today, I heard," Amphitrite added.

Celeste considered asking whether Amphitrite had extended Cid an invitation to her sewing circle, or if he'd just shown up with gossip of his own.

"I was never planning _not_ to."

"Normalcy is a dangerous drug," Amphitrite tutted, "We detest it when it is all we know, but the moment anything slightly out of the ordinary occurs, we find ourselves scrambling for it like a lifeline."

"And I'm scrambling?"

"I suppose, Celeste, you'd know the answer to that better than anyone."

And, unprompted, Celeste found herself recalling her breakdown in Milo Thatch's room, that feeling as of a hundred tons had come crashing down around her, a crushing burden and an alarmingly quick release following so hard upon each other.

"I don't know what else to do," she said at length, "I can't just stay home and wait, I know, I've tried..."

"No, neither can I. Five minutes in front of that accursed television set and my neighbors threatened to call the police for disturbing the peace." she paused, "I never could stand soap operas."

Celeste nodded, thinking of something else to say. Selphie was by now in her sixth rendition of 'Wind Beneath My Wings', her face flushed red and every muscle in her throat standing out quite grotesquely against her skin.

Ms. Trepe was sitting in her chair, legs crossed, bobbing one ankle up and down in an expression of ever-increasing irritation. Skellington was practically dancing on the auditorium seats, yelling his monosyllabic pointers at regular intervals.

"Yo, Fair!" a sun bleached blur bounded into the row ahead of them, looking over the tops of the seats at Zack.

"Tidus!" Zack looked up at his teammate, only to hurriedly look back to Celeste and Amphitrite, "What's...what's up?"

Tidus's gaze hardened, "Nothing on my end. I thought you were _out today_."

"Out to..." Zack stumbled over his words, "I mean. I was. I am!"

"Clearly, you two are trying to talk without talking," said Amphitrite, "I'll say again, if I were a suspicious type of person, I'd assume this has to do with us old birds being here."

"Old birds?" repeated Celeste, offended.

"Oh, um..." Zack looked to Tidus, as if for help, but got none, "We're just talking...um... Boy stuff."

"Boy stuff?" prompted Celeste.

"Yep," Zack nodded, clearly pointedly avoiding looking over at Tidus, who looked hungry for blood, "Personal boy stuff."

"Is _that_ what they're calling it now?" Amphitrite deadpanned, "Fine, then, off with you."

Zack didn't look entirely thrilled about his fate, as Tidus got to his feet and practically hauled him off to the other side of the auditorium.

"Shouldn't we make sure they're okay?" asked Celeste, "That looked pretty..."

"Celeste, the more you try to figure out what these kids are up to, the less you'll learn. Or need I remind you how I figured out my granddaughter and your son were a notch or two more than friends?"

Celeste smiled despite herself, "Well...that was a bit different."

"A person learns a great deal more by watching and listening than by throwing themselves into everyone else's business."

Celeste didn't really see the point in arguing with her, "Well, then maybe I can tell you something and you can listen."

"Voluntarily telling me about yourself. The strain must be getting to you."

"Maybe it is," Celeste reached into her jacket pocket, producing the hastily refolded sheet of paper, "This was left in the dumpster behind Cid's, addressed to me."

"And there's a convenient mailbox just half a block down," said Amphitrite dryly, "You don't suppose..."

"That it's about Sora?" Celeste smiled ruefully, unfolding the letter (it didn't smell nearly as bad as it had in the dumpster, the envelope had apparently absorbed the brunt of it) in her lap, "That's what I thought too. Only problem is..."

"It's Greek to you." Amphitrite finished for her.

Celeste nodded, looking the sheet of paper over. The weird, bunched writing, the curved symbols, all juxtaposed against each other, more like a grid of illustrations than a message.

"It's like it's written in code," she explained, "I don't know if they were trying to help me or threaten me, but I don't see how they expected to do either if I couldn't understand a word they were saying."

"It actually does look Greek," observed Amphitrite, "parts of it. Know any legionaries?"

"None come to mind," said Celeste dryly, "I don't know what to make of it, if I should go to the police..."

"Why? So Ratcliffe can cough in blustery outrage at the thing until we all come down with plague? No, you're better off holding it close to you. Ten to one, it _is_ from some unsavory sort, and the more attention you draw to it, the more danger you put Sora in."

She said it all very matter-of-factly, as if it should be obvious, which didn't do much for Celeste's outlook.

"There must be _some_ way to make sense of it," Amphitrite continued, "These people, whoever they are, wouldn't have bothered with the thing if there was no message to be found. It may well be the answer to this one is in plain..."

Whatever it was she meant to say next, she was drowned out by an octave-defying wail from Selphie on the stage.

" _Don't you know that you're my hero? You're everything I ever hoped tooooooooo beeeeeeeeeeeeeee? I wouldn't be myself without yoooooooooooooooooou... You are the wind beneath my..._ "

"Yes!" cried Skellington, falling to his knees, arms held aloft above his head, "You've got it, you've got it, by George, I think you've..."

"What's that supposed to mean?" a sharper voice, not as loud but considerably more volatile (and therefore, noticeable all the same, at least to someone with Celeste's collective experience of teenage boys) cut into the principal's rhapsody.

Celeste and Amphitrite both turned down the row of seats to the far end of the auditorium, where Zack was railing at a surly Tidus, his face flushed beet red.

"Look, man, maybe you can just keep your voice down..." Tidus managed, in a strained voice, as if all eyes weren't already on them.

"I know what I'm doing!" Zack replied, heedless, "And, look, I'm grateful to you for helping, and everything, but..."

"But you're the boss, now, is that it? Look, like it or not, bro, this is my problem now too..."

"I'm not your _bro_!" Zack shot back, fists clenched at his sides.

"Boy stuff," Amphitrite tittered dismissively, "How haven't you gone mad yet?"

"It's a struggle," Celeste replied faintly, already moving forward, "Boys!" she called out a little louder, "Boys, come on..."

But both of them seemed totally oblivious, "Fine, maybe I'm not!" said Tidus, "But if you think I've gonna just shut up and play nice while your psycho..."

And, before Celeste could come any closer, Tidus went flying into the nearest seat, a welt quickly forming on his cheek where Zack's fist had struck him.

A rumble of low mutterings echoed from the scant crowd of the auditorium. Quistis Trepe lowered her clipboard, getting to her feet with a grim expression, as Skellington straightened up with a requisite, "What's this?"

Zack stood over Tidus, opening and closing the fingers on his hand, as though testing to see if he'd broken any of them.

"Oh...oh man," he said faintly, looking down at the panting Tidus, "I'm...I'm sorry, shouldn't've..."

But Tidus was on his feet again before he could finish, fist flying so fast it was a blur as it belted Zack in the gut.

"Oh, for the love of..." breathed Celeste, hurrying over so as to break the boys up, "Boys, come on, cut it out..."

But it was too fargone by now. Tidus and Zack were a tangle of limbs on the floor, punching and kicking indiscriminately.

A shrill whistle cut into the madness as Trepe cut in front of Celeste, "Did you not get the message? This is supposed to be an exercise in school community." she lowered the tiny metal instrument from her mouth and moved as if to step in between them, but was herself barreled over to the side by a petite powerhouse with a voice three times her size.

"Oh, move _over_!" Selphie stepped into the fray, "Both of you, stop it, you're acting like a bunch of..."

But she tripped over her own feet, landing just in time to intercept a blow from one boy meant for the other.

"In retrospect," commented Amphitrite from just over Celeste's shoulder, "I'd have been better off yelling at the TV."

* * *

"Look, I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure this is illegal!"

Sora's voice rebounded off the blank white walls around him. He sighed, leaning his head back against the poor excuse for a cushion on the seat behind him.

"But why would you care?" he sighed, trying yet again to budge his limbs from the leather straps that held them down.

He supposed it could be worse. At least there was no death match he had to participate in at the pain of, well, death. And this place didn't smell nearly as bad as the Underworld. If it smelled like anything, it was a hospital waiting room. And while that wasn't exactly a comforting smell, it wasn't _terrible_ either.

No, it wasn't the worse thing that had happened to him. Just one of a very long list of bad things that wasn't showing any signs of coming to any end any time soon.

"Do I at least get lunch?" he called out, "You can't pump me full of wonder drugs if I'm dead!"

If that was their plan of course, Sora really wasn't sure. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that a supposedly legitimate local business even _had_ secret labs where they tied unwilling patients to operating tables and played Roy Orbison until they wanted to rip their hands from of their bindings just to gauge their eyes out.

"If this is to see how long it takes before I go crazy, it's...it's..." Sora closed his eyes, trying to shut out the music Vexen had left blaring on wherever it was coming from, "...working."

He made a silent promise to himself that, when he got out of here, he would never make fun of his mother's Laura Nyro records again. Compared to this, they were siren song.

" _In dreams I walk to you..._ " he started singing along in a long, ringing voice, if only to test how much of this he could get away with before Vexen came back and whacked him with a rubber mallet or something.

" _In dreams I talk to you... In dreams you're mine, in dreams you're fine... But only in dreams, in beautiful dreams. In dreams, in dreams, in..._ "

To Sora's surprise, the door swung open, and a tall, thin figure half ran, half fell in, hastily pressing it shut behind him, "Could you _shut_ the fuck..." he turned to face him, and Sora got a full view of a pale, angular face, bright green eyes over twin red tattoos, the same shade of red as a wild tangle of hair over his shoulders, "...up."

"Oh no," Sora groaned heavenward, "Aw, come _on,_ seriously?"

"Jesus, what the hell are they doing to you?"

Sora stared at the indolent leather-clad stick figure in equal parts disbelief and outrage.

"Hate to break it to you, kid, but I wouldn't trust these guys to give you your flu shot."

"Are you kidding?"

"Usually, but to be honest, I'm a bit off my game today..."

"You don't remember me?"

The biker blinked, "Please don't tell me you're the frontman of the Cardinal Points, post hair-transplant?"

And so Sora exploded, "You hit me with your stupid jacked up sports' car, you son of a bitch!"

"Wha..." for a very brief moment he looked honestly confused, before something like realization seemed to descend, "Oh. Shit."

"It's _your_ fault I missed the game! And Riku wanted to apologize, and we fought, and Kairi left, and got kidnapped, and then Riku was arrested, until he wasn't, _also_ because of you, and then I chased him down the tunnel and then we _both_ got kidnapped and..."

"Look, not that I don't appreciate how important you think I am..."

"This is _all your fault_!"

"It sure is," he spread his arms wide, "Sorry."

" _Sorry_?"

"You can kick my ass later, I'll even cry a bit, if you're into that..."

"What?!"

"But for now, you're not kicking anything anytime soon," he indicated the bonds, "What did they do to you?"

"Nothing yet, unless you count looping shitty music for half a day. I'm sure they've got worse lined up for me."

"Probably," Axel looked up at the speaker the music was coming from, "Hey, speaking of shitty music, you wouldn't happen to have seen this friend of mine? About your age, frosted tips, acid-washed jeans. Probably not wearing shoes. Goes by Demyx, Dem, Demy, might've told you to call him Rainman?"

"No one's told me to call anybody anything," Sora said thinly, "And shouldn't you be asking about Riku?"

"Well, I have more than one friend, you..." but Axel's expression changed, as his face lit up to a degree Sora would consider somewhat irresponsible given the situation, "Wait, Riku's _here_? Like, with you?"

Sora found that he didn't quite know what to say. At first, he'd actually been looking forward, even if in some petty, perverse way, of telling Axel his partner in crime was in parts unknown, but something about the sudden surge of hope in Axel's voice put that plan on ice.

 _He really cares about him,_ Sora realized, _they're...friends._

"I...um..." he cleared his throat, "I don't know. I don't think so. Somebody else grabbed him last night and left me until these guys..." he looked around as if the _X_ -Corp building itself was some living, malevolent force, "picked me up."

"Oh," Axel's face fell, but only for a moment, "But you said you guys were kidnapped, right?"

"Well, yeah, I mean _I_ was. Riku went after me."

"Sounds like him, he doesn't know when to quit, that kid."

"He sure doesn't," murmured Sora, but Axel was still talking.

"Like, that night when he bailed me out..."

"You mean when you broke _him_ out?"

"No, the night _before_ that, when I was locked up for hitting you or whatever..."

"Whatever, sure."

"...he was so torn up about what happened, you'd think he was driving the car..." he stopped himself, as if realizing what he'd said.

 _Yeah, not so much saintly guilt than he's been in love with me since we were in elementary school. But sure, yeah, what a well-meaning Joe..._

Sora found himself wondering if Axel knew about that, Riku's feelings for him, but decided it couldn't be so. The way Riku had looked last night, telling him everything... There was no way he'd ever said a word about it to anyone else before. Not even his supposed best friend.

"I don't know where Riku is," Sora told Axel before he could embarrass himself any further, "To be honest, I've been kind of wondering about him too."

"Wondering?"

Sora sighed, "...worrying."

"Kissed and made up, huh?" Axel smirked.

 _So maybe he_ does _know about Riku? Or maybe he's just an asshole who thinks he's funny, either one works._

Sora wasn't going to indulge either possibility though.

"He had my back before, whatever else he did. I owe him one."

But saying it aloud now was the first time Sora really believed it. Whatever Riku felt for him, no matter how much trouble those feelings had caused, he'd still gone into the Underworld to save him. And he _had_ saved him, Sora knew that much.

"I get that. I owe a lot of people, some of 'em twos and threes. One or two fours... You don't even _wanna_ know what I owe Riku..."

"Would it shut you up if I told you there's a singing maniac with two feet of platinum blond hair and a bunch of needles and he might be back any minute?"

"Oh..." Axel nodded, "Right."

He looked up and down at Sora's restraints, pulling without much effort on one of the wrist straps, "There like a key for these or something?"

"Well, depending who you ask, _I'm_ the key."

"That's what your girlfriend calls you?"

Sora impulsively aimed a kick at Axel's shin, but the strap around his ankle stopped that before it could start, sending a sore jolt up his leg.

"Hey, hey...joke, jeez. You jock types, always the same. Humor flies over your head..."

"I'm not a jock," said Sora as Axel starting rummaging in his pockets.

"Football player, hot girlfriend..."

"Hey!"

"Reasonable assumption," Axel continued, "Killer smile...Ah!" he retrieved something from his jeans pocket which, in a moment became a thin, shiny blade in his hand.

"This the part where you cut my teeth out to make a necklace?"

"Nah, I've been wanting to get my ears pierced for a while, though, so..." he rolled his eyes, "Just hold still, okay? This should take a jiffy."

As he started sawing through the straps, he kept talking, "So, that thing with the train..."

"You know about it?"

Axel looked at him, askance, "Dude, you made the 6:00 news."

"Wait, _seriously?_ People know about that? Are they looking, is there some kind of search thing going..."

"Well, nobody knew if it _was_ you," said Axel with a shrug, "So no search parties. At least not last I checked, I dunno, I've had shit of my own to sift through."

"Your friend?" asked Sora as the strap on his right ankle was cut through, allowing him to stretch his leg out on the floor with a gratified sigh.

"Demyx, yeah. He's supposed to be locked up in here somewhere, same as you."

"Well, if he's lucky, they picked a better song."

"Eh, Dem's got weird taste as it is." and like that, Sora's other leg was free and Axel moved on to his wrists.

"Is he, like...one of you?"

"Stunningly gorgeous? No, sucks for him, though."

"A _biker_? One of the Earthshakers?"

Axel paused, as if he needed to think about it before he says, "No. Much tighter social circle." with another light snap, the left strap was cut through.

"Tighter than your biker gang?" Sora asked, flexing his fingers in relief at the sudden release of pressure, "Is Riku in that circle, too?"

Axel shook his head, "This circle predates him by a little bit. Riku and I are tight, but... Dem's practically family."

"Is them?" Sora asked wryly, but Axel didn't seem to get it as he sawed through the fourth and final strap.

"Is who?"

"Forget it." Sora swung his legs off the bench, leaning back to stretch his taut limbs, "Aw, man..."

"You okay?"

"I'm not dead," Sora shrugged, though that only made the crick in his neck worse.

"That's the spirit." Axel closed and pocketed his knife, "So it looks like we're in business."

"Looks like we are." Sora said wearily, rubbing his neck.

"It's Axel, by the way," he reminded him, stretching out his fist as if he expected Sora to give him a pound, or something.

"Yeah, I know." Sora looked at the fist, then up at Axel's expectant grin, "You don't know my name, do you?"

"I do not."

"Sora," and he gave Axel a very brief fist bump, "Now let's get out of here."

* * *

The clock couldn't possibly tick more slowly, as if by stretching minutes into eons it could pressure Selphie into judgment, into guilt, into responsibility.

Pfft. She should think the invisible forces of destiny knew her better than that. Absolutely none of this, nada, zippo, zilch, was in any way, shape, or form, her fault.

"I'm really sorry, Selphie," Zack's voice tickled her right ear again, as he leaned precariously far out of his seat, "I should've been more careful, I never meant to hit..."

"Oh, shut up, man," groused Tidus from the desk to her left, "You couldn't have hit her if you tried."

"Well, I _wasn't_ trying!" protested Zack, apparently oblivious to irony.

"Quiet, boys," warned Ms. Trepe in a thin voice, looking over the top of the lurid paperback she was reading, "You can argue which of you is more violent on your own time."

Zack lowered his head, chastened, while Tidus made a distinctly unpleasant hand gesture in the direction of their Algebra teacher, though she had already returned to her book.

Selphie adjusted the by now unpleasantly soggy ice pack against her lower lip. She was told the swelling should go down over night, and therefore wouldn't interfere with her eleventh hour number during the Destiny High Community Vigil (co-sponsored, of course, by the Radiant County school board, the PTA, the DPD Youth League, and Principal Skellington's indefatigable ego).

Never mind that she was entirely innocent of any crime in this situation, and had only been caught in the crossfire between two stupid boys arguing over stupid things with their stupid fists.

And now, as if to prove the immortal stupidity of their gender, these two boys were now arguing over which of them was guiltier of splitting her lip.

 _If this is that Allure of Venus everyone goes on about, I demand a refund. I am Woman_...

She tightened her grip on the ice pack and heard it squelch.

Ms. Trepe had returned to the relative safety of her paperback. There was a gaudy illustration on the cover, like a glossy photograph developed in radioactive waste. Selphie could make out an alabaster bosom, a chain of thick pearls around the faceless woman's neck. If she squinted, she could even make out a nipple poking over the sheer red fabric of Milady's negligee.

Selphie wondered if Lady Last Romance Hero was also regularly socked in the face by suitors who then challenged each other to duels about who was more responsible. The way Trepe was smirking as she read suggested she probably did.

Who the hell thought that kind of thing was romantic? Here she was, doing the high school equivalent of prison time just for trying to keep the peace between her two consummate meatheads.

If this was womanhood, she was screwed. There was only so much of this shit her pretty face could take.

The ice pack was dripping steadily now, mysterious blue goop collecting in a miserable little puddle on the desktop. Selphie almost wretched.

"Ahem," she cleared her throat, raising her free hand to get Ms. Trepe's attention.

Trepe looked very, _very_ briefly over the top of Milady's book, met Selphie's eyes for a fraction of a second, and returned to the book.

" _Ahem_!" Selphie repeated. To her left, Tidus looked up, mouthing, ' _What's up?_ '

Selphie wasn't about to dignify that with a response. She reached her hand up higher. If this was gonna be a battle of wills, bring it on. She may be dispirited, but her will hadn't been crushed by years of toil in the American public school system, which was a victory in and of itself.

She stretched higher, dearly hoping her top wasn't hiking itself too far up as she did so, "A. Hem," she even split it in half.

Just when she was considering grabbing her lip gloss and writing it out on construction paper for the hearing impaired, a voice sounded from the back of the room, a slow, satisfied drawl.

"Yo, Treppy, I think superstar's water broke."

Selphie whipped her head around so quickly she was amazed she hadn't snapped it off, to face the long-haired indignant smiling lazily at her from the back row, an oversize black fedora tipped at an absurd angle on his head, like he thought it made him look badass, or something.

"No one asked your opinion, Irvine," she told him shortly.

"It's not true?" Irvine propped his head up in one hand, leaning so far forward, Selphie was surprised (and disappointed) he didn't tip the desk over.

"Could you _shut up_ , Hideous?" demanded Tidus, not even looking over his shoulder at him.

"Aw, that's cute. Kinneas Hideous. You're a poet and you didn't blow it."

"Boys..." Trepe began.

"Yeah, because that worked _so well_ last time..." said Selphie.

"Selphie, I don't think you appreciate that I'm sacrificing my afternoon too..."

"What a revelation! None of us wants to be here! Now can I _please_ go to the lady's room to refill this bag of blue pisswater before my lip turns into a frikking _eggplant_?"

She distinctly heard Zack mutter a very muted, "Oh shit," under his breath, but she ignored him.

Trepe sat back in her chair, lowering her paperback to her desk. There was a tiny, self-satisfied little smile on her face, as if Selphie had just made her day or something.

Bitch.

"You have five minutes."

"I'll be back in six," Selphie told her primly, getting to her feet with as much dignity as she could manage at this point, and marching, head held high out into the hallway, making sure to drip as much piss water she could on the floor on the way out.

She walked down the quiet, afternoon hallway toward the girl's bathroom, feeling the sore throbbing slowly, but steadily come pulsing back to her lip.

Zack could blame himself all he wanted, but she was pretty sure this was Tidus's doing, accidentally or not. Not that she really cared which of them had been directly responsible. As far as she was concerned, both of them were idiots trying to out-idiot each other.

And for the stupidest reason. You'd think losing two of your friends in two days and having to harbor another friend's long lost mystery sibling would kickstart some sort of maturity, or at least self-awareness, but _no_ , let it never be said that the lads of Destiny High had anything resembling _perspective_...

"Stupid boys," Selphie said at last, holding the open ice pack under the running tap, feeling her fingers go numb under the cold water.

"I know, right?"

" _Ach!_ " Selphie whirled around and, without thinking, hurled the half-full ice pack with all the strength she had into the face of...

"Aw, jeez, girl!" Irvine spluttered, lifting the brim of his stupid hat so that water ran off the side in a deluge.

"You deserve it," she told him, "sneaking up on me like that..."

"Hey, I secured your release, didn't I?"

"You embarrassed me in public. Join the club."

Irvine took off his hat, shaking out his sandy hair like a dog out of the rain, "Not even a thank you?"

"Thankless tasks are the noblest of all."

"But I'm not trying to be noble."

"No, you're trying to be a pain in my tuckus, and you're succeeding. What are you even doing here? This is the girl's bathroom."

"The last place they'll ever think to look."

"With your sterling reputation, this'll be the first place they check." she moved past him, somewhat surprised he wasn't moving to block her way, though he did make quick work about dogging her heels back out into the hall.

"I resent that."

"I don't care," she quickened her pace, and heard his footsteps quicken in response.

"I'm not some kinda creeper, or anything, Selphie, you know that..."

"Oh, please, spare me the spiel," Selphie stood in the middle of the hallway, turning around to face him, "The last thing I need is some other schmuck's sob story."

"Good," he crossed his arms, holding his hat between them, a curtain of hair falling in an unkempt wave over his eyes, "I won't give you one."

"What do you _want_ , Irvine?" she demanded, "Really?"

"Well, s'no secret you've been having a rough time..."

"News to me."

Irvine cocked an eyebrow, and Selphie had an _incredibly_ strong impulse to ensure they had matching lips.

"If you were so concerned about Sora and Kairi and my delicate disposition, you had oodles of opportunities to check."

"Not when you weren't flanked by Dumb and Dumbest."

"Zack is _not_ dumb," Selphie retorted at once.

"What about Tidus?" Irvine chuckled.

"I said what I said."

"Huh..." he looked around at the rows of lockers to either side of them, "So I guess it's not true, then."

"Gossip rarely is, you shouldn't partake..."

"So you're not sweet on Tidus?"

"Who told you that?" she demanded, too quickly, too sharply. Irvine threw back his head and laughed.

"I'm serious, Irvine. Who told you?"

"You did," he waved his sodden hat in front of his face, as if to fan off a wave of the vapors, "Just now."

Selphie rolled her eyes, "Me and Tidus are none of your business. Your chances with me are still less than zero."

Irvine frowned, "Harsh. What's wrong with me?"

"Everything," Selphie smiled, "Hope that clears it up."

She continued down the hall, but Irvine ran ahead of her, getting in her way. She sighed, "Really?"

"Where are you going?"

"Back to prison, before Trepe decides to take any more of her sexless aggression out on me."

"Why?"

Selphie rolled her eyes, "I've had more than enough aggression for one day." she hesitated, looking up him and down, "What are you even in detention for, anyway?"

"Eh," he shrugged, "lobbed a spit ball at Wazowski's head. Nothing major."

"A spit ball?"

"Hey, his head's basically one big target, I couldn't resist."

"You're an idiot."

"I know," he looked over his shoulder, then back at her, face parted in a childlike grin, "wasn't long ago, we were idiots together."

"It was a pretty long time ago."

"Depends how you count, I guess."

"Maybe. Are Dummy years like dog years, or is there some other equation you use..."

"You still sing really good,"

Selphie stopped, cocking an eyebrow; she didn't even bother correcting his grammar, "You were at the auditions?"

"I was _in_ them."

"Oh yeah? What's your talent?"

"You know there's more than one answer to that." he waited half a second, then laughed, "Fine, I was hiding from Wazowski back stage. You still sound great."

And Selphie couldn't help a tiny, satisfied smirk from spreading across her face, "Well, thanks. I try."

"All those talent shows of yours paid off for somebody, huh?"

"So it would appear," she started past him, and was nearly in view of Ms. Trepe's door when he called over to her.

"Can I get an autograph?"

And Selphie couldn't help but laugh, not looking back at him as she walked, "Contact my agent."

"Which one's he? Dumb or Dumber?"

"Figure it out!"

Selphie strolled past Trepe's desk, giving the woman a thin smile as she passed, though she only barely looked up from her book.

"Where's your ice pack?" asked Zack as she sat back down.

"Where's Kinneas?" asked Tidus, almost in the same breath.

Selphie almost answered the both of them but, even as she opened her mouth, reconsidered, and gave both her curious suitors/friends/tormentors/accomplices a little catty smile.

It was the least she could do.

* * *

The wind snatched the air from his lungs, each breath felt like a desperate animal, scratching its way through shredded insides. Every part of him hurt, so much so that it was no longer possible to tell where the pain was coming from, just that it as there.

Cold air bit at his face, whistling in his ears so he couldn't help but hear a wheezing voice calling out his name.

He'd never seen Maleficent look scared before, weak, powerless. _He_ had done that, he had done that to her, the woman who'd lied to him, controlled him, claimed she'd given him a life when all she'd done was take his life away before it had even started...

 _I killed her_. _I held her throat in my hands and I looked her in the eyes, and I squeezed the life out of her until there was none left._

He stopped, falling to his knees on a bed of dry leaves and old twigs. His stomach was roiling. He wanted to throw up, wanted to cry, to scream, to curl up in a ball and never get up.

His hands still burned, itched with a frightening persistence. Alone out of everything, the aching in his lungs, the pulsing of his stomach, the feeling that his head was being shattered from the inside by a thousand little hammers, he noticed the itch in his hands most of all.

Slowly, he lifted his shaking hands up to his face. Everything around him was blurry, out of focus, glimpsed as if through frosted glass, or gauze bandages. But his hands he saw clearly in front of him. Raw, red, stained with blood. His own and someone else's...

 _I had to do it_ , some faint voice in the back of his mind insisted, _I had no choice, he'd seen_...

Seen what? Even now, it didn't seem real. Like some horrible dream, a nightmare he couldn't escape from. He felt tired, yet full of adrenaline, alone yet overwhelmed, wanting to cry tears of terror and joy all at once.

What was happening to him? Every time he closed his eyes, he saw something else. Dirty walls, heavy iron chains...the prisoner he couldn't save.

 _She has a name_ , that cold, sold voice again, _Use it. You owe her that much_.

Aqua. He'd killed her too, held her and choked the life from her body, even as she begged him to stop.

Begged _him_ to stop.

Terra. Terra and Aqua, imprisoned together, no one but each other for company, alone and frightened and desperate...

Until Terra had stopped being Terra. And he'd had no further use for her.

She'd been _pregnant_. They were going to have a baby.

 _No, they_ had _a baby. They just never met him._

But that wasn't true, he knew that. Maleficent may have gotten to Terra first, but Aqua had gotten to meet her son.

He remembered the way she'd looked at him, eyes wide and full of fear, falling from the bed, tripping over that elaborate nightgown of hers in an attempt to get away from him.

The way he'd cried afterward, cried though he didn't know why. Whatever certain friends of his might think, he wasn't _that_ soft-hearted. There'd been a reason, he just didn't know it.

"What did they do to you?" he whispered the words so soft he could barely hear them, holding his hands up to his face.

The blood on his palms was still wet, staining his face. Part of him wanted to be repelled, to react, to freak out, but he couldn't.

Pete had been there too, over Maleficent's shoulder as she'd held the smoking gun. He'd known, as Jafar had known.

They'd lied to him, hidden him, watched him... _Killed_ him.

 _They didn't kill you_ , but that voice was growing weaker and weaker each time he heard it, _You're here now, remember? You're alive, you're breathing, you're_ you _._

"Get out," he said softly, "Get out, get out, get out, get _out_!"

He heard a fluttering and a chorus of bird calls overheard. A flock flushed from their nests, frightened off by his shouting.

He remembered birds. Robins, bluebirds cardinals, coming to rest at perches in the garden. She'd loved birds, hadn't she? She loved everything.

" _Cardinals, they're my favorite,_ " he could see her even now, face flushed pink against the cold, " _You know what they say about cardinals? They're spirits of the ones we love, coming to visit us_."

"Wrong..." he said aloud, running his hands down his face, feeling the blood come off tacky and heavy against his cheeks, "It's worse than that. God..."

His eyes were burning, as if desperate for tears to come, but they wouldn't.

"I'm sorry..." but he no longer knew who he was apologizing to, or even who it was apologizing, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm..."

 _Now, now. Enough of that_.

It was a different voice, now. A strong voice, authoritative and direct. In control.

 _You are stronger than this._

He stopped, forced his eyes open, looking at the tall, thin trees of the glade around him. The wind was still blowing, a cold, strong wind down off the mountains.

"Wha..." he panted, each breath a long, drawn out pang, though he found it was getting harder and harder to notice that pain each time, "W-who is that?"

 _There is nothing to fear. This is merely an awakening. A meeting of the minds, a long time in coming_.

"Nothing to fear? I...I'm a _murderer_. I _killed_ some..."

 _Fear is for lesser beasts. You are smarter, stronger, more capable, than to succumb to such pithy vices as fear and guilt._

"Who are you?"

 _Why, I am you,_ if a disembodied voice could glower, this one certainly was, _You are aware, of course, that you are talking to yourself._

"No..." he shook his head, "No, no, that's not right, I _know_ that's not what's..."

 _Now pick yourself up. There is much to be done._

And, before he could process what was happening, he found his legs moving beneath him, his whole body rising to stand, face up against the wind

He felt the bile rise in his throat, and then felt it go back down, as if pushed by invisible hands. His hands twitched, as if wanting to ball into fists, but they stilled almost at once. He stood there, looking up at the trees, at the woods around him, at the outline of the Rockies ahead, lit from behind by the late afternoon sun.

"How..." he began to ask, though even his voice felt tight, restrained, "how are you..."

 _All in time. But now..._

Riku felt himself moving forward, walking with a slow and steady deliberation, like a soldier on the march.

 _We must come home._

* * *

 **A/N:** Hope you liked it! Chapters 19 and 20 will both take place in the nighttime, so expect 19 two Fridays from now. I wish I could say two weeks, but I was a day late this time, so...

Well, you get it.

Until then!


	19. Internal Affairs

Chapter 19, Internal Affairs

 **A/N:** So...I'm a week late. Finals haven't been fun. But, in any case, this chapter is a great deal longer than the last few, and even has an extra scene! So...enjoy?

* * *

There was a tall glass vase on the desk, its mouth choked over with big, violet and blue flowers. Hydrangeas, practically dripping their honey sweet fragrance.

Larxene had been staring at them for what felt like ages, in between pacing furiously between the desk, the bay window (which offered a particularly inspiring as well as infuriating view of the setting sun over the houses of Twilight in the distance), and the locked door.

There was a framed photo next to the vase, leaning at a picture perfect angle against the glass. Larxene had just gotten her hair done, a fashionable bowl cut with severe bangs. But she didn't dominate the picture, no. That was Luxia's job, unwritten though it was.

They were standing in front of the house, arms around each other. Larxene couldn't remember the occasion, but it was probably very shortly after they'd moved in. Luxia's hair was shorter too, but furiously fuchsia as ever. His mouth was partly open, as in a laugh. A perfect laugh, paused at just the right time so as to look cute and fun, rather than awkward or silly.

Perfectly posed.

It was just the two of them in that picture. Larxene supposed Demyx must have been the one taking it. There were no pictures of the three of them anywhere. Larxene was entirely certain none had ever been taken.

Her brother may as well have never existed as far as her boyfriend was concerned. She'd known that, and let it happen anyway.

She picked up the picture, turning it this way and that in her hands. It smelled like rose petals. The bottled fragrance you could buy for fifty bucks at the nearest perfume counter. The whole room stank like that, but the smell practically _oozed_ from the picture.

With a sudden, sharp cry of rage, Larxene whirled around and tossed the picture across the room at the door, where it shattered against the polished cherry wood before clattering to the floor, with as little grace as Marluxia himself had against his tower of stupid glass figures.

All polished, all pretty...all posed. Fake.

No sooner had the picture come to rest against the floor, there was a click of the lock being undone, and the door opened, that familiar, tremendous shadow falling over the threshold, over her.

"Oh. You again." Larxene turned away from him, choosing to observe Lexeaus's reflection in the window, rather than the man himself. His piercing, unblinking stare wasn't as bothersome that way, for whatever reason.

"You were expecting someone else?"

"When I figured out where you'd brought me, yeah. Half expected Marluxia to come waltzing in with a 70 page nondisclosure agreement and a stiletto so I could sign it with blood."

"I won't speak for your Marluxia..."

"He's not _mine_."

"So he isn't," Lexeaus noted the broken picture on the floor, sending it skittering across the floor with a single twitch of a column-thick boot, "We're not savages here, Larxene."

"No, of course not. I should be relieved you locked me up in a room with a _window_!" she slammed her hand against the window, turning around to face Lexeaus despite herself, "A lesser firm would have found an airless hole somewhere beneath the Earth's crust."

"You're being dramatic."

"Oh, am I?" she walked around the side of the desk, lifting herself up to a sitting position, "Then enlighten me, Lexeaus. Why the cushy prison cell?"

"It's your boyfriend's office."

"Which you locked me in with no explanation and even less of an apology," she held one of the hydrangeas up to her nose, taking a little whiff of their decadent scent.

"I never knew he had an office here. He never told me. There's a lot he never told me."

"The Mansion's a classified site. What goes on in this facility is need-to-know only, he was right not to tell you."

"We're a _biotech_ company, not the Pentagon!" Larxene rolled her eyes, "If we were, I never would've signed on."

"Then why did you?"

Larxene glowered at him, forcing herself to her feet. She got the unsettling idea that he _knew_ the answer to that question, why she'd started working here. That it had nothing to do with what the company did or didn't do. Just with a certain pearly, too perfect smile, and a silky-voiced promise of a better life, well away from the dingy alleys and bike trails of her teenage years.

"What is this, Lexeaus?" she asked him, back to pacing the office, "You trying to...soften me up, see how much I know? When does Xaldin come in with the cattle prod and the dental drill?"

"I already told you..."

"You're not savages. That just means you can think of worse things to do to me, and fancier ways to do them." she walked around the desk so it could be a buffer between them if Lexeaus _did_ decide he wanted to use those giant meathooks of his on her.

"I'm gonna cut the bullshit now, just get it out there," she put her hands on the desktop, leaning over toward him, "I know what Marluxia did. He found out you guys were up to something, and like the ambitious idiot he is, he tried to blackmail you. But you...well not you, Lexeaus, you're nothing but a dutiful little soldier..."

The desk shook under her hands, snatching the breath from her lungs as Lexeaus put his hands over hers, their noses barely touching over the desk.

"I don't mean any harm to you, Larxene," he rumbled, dangerously quiet.

"Of course you don't," she told him in a steely a voice as she could manage, "you're practically the Nobel Laureate."

"Don't test my patience."

"Ditto. My brother, where is he, why do you want him, and why did you want _me_ before Luxia decided to play negotiator?"

Lexeaus pushed himself away from the desk, standing upright with eerily perfect bearing as he walked away from her.

"What Marluxia did was stupid and thoughtless."

"We're agreed."

"It was even stupider to let him make his demands, but that decision was not mine to make."

"Deciding who and who not to kidnap and lock up in your secure research facility _doesn't_ count as a Security thing?"

He turned around with a surprising speed for one his size, "I take no joy in what has become of your brother, but he is a part of this now, whatever any of us want."

"What has..." Larxene's mouth was suddenly dry, words difficult to conjure, "...what has _become_ of him? What does that...you make it sound like..."

She remembered Axel's glib speculating on the drive over, that maybe Demyx had been conscripted into some secret experiment. How she'd laughed it off, said that was nonsense, that all sorts of terrible things could've happened to him, but not _that,_ nothing like that...

"You were being considered," Lexeaus continued, "for some time."

"Considered for _what_?"

"That's not mine to say."

"The hell it isn't!" she charged over to him and, against whatever speck of her common sense hadn't already been snuffed out by Axel, grabbed him by the lapels of his uniform jacket, "You said yourself, we're all a part of the same machine, like it or not. What did they want to do to me, and _what_ are they doing to..."

He stepped back, only half a step, but which such speed that Larxene fell backward into Marluxia's desk, jostling ledgers, pens, notebooks...

She caught the hydrangea vase before any more than a few drops of water could spill on the floor and, without a second thought, flung it at Lexeaus with a shrieked, " _Tell me_!"

The vase flew across the room, shattering against a bookcase, spilling broken stems and soggy petals over the floor. Lexeaus stood right where he'd been, flexing the fingers of the hand that had swatted the vase away, as if it had been nothing.

Larxene stared him down, her breaths coming quick and ragged, strands of hair escaping her bun to hang in front of her face.

Lexeaus moved as if to take a step closer to her, face still inscrutable as ever. But before he could do anything more, there was a sound as of some great switch being flipped somewhere, and all the lights went out.

Larxene felt her heart skip, as she looked frantically around the room, "What the hell was..."

Lexeaus shushed her. He had gone to full attention now, scanning the room with a methodical slowness, not betraying even a hint of unease or surprise.

In the next instant, the air was rent with the sound of sirens. Harsh, bleating beeps, each call following seconds after the first. Through the crack under the door, Larxene could see the flashing of a harsh white light, coming in and out with each siren.

"What's going on?"

"Stay here," Lexeaus didn't even look back to her, already moving to the door.

"The hell I am!" she hurried to cut in front of him, but he had only to put one hand on her shoulder to steer her around, easily as if she were a doll, pushing her aside, not roughly, but not gently either, as he left the room, closing and locking the door behind him in the very same motion.

"Dammit!" Larxene jostled the doorknob, but to no avail. The thing had at least three locks. Lexeaus might be able to kick it down if he wanted to, but of course he wasn't on her side of the door. Or well, her side in any event.

Her mind went at once to Axel. If somebody else had caught him, or if maybe he'd tripped some kind of alarm...

With a sense of mounting terror, Larxene realized that Axel was her only hope.

Fuck that.

"Hey! Hey, anyone out there?" she slammed on the door, giving it an angry kick for good measure, for all the good it did, "Burn in hell, the lot of you!"

She ran over to the window, looking down at the darkening grounds. Marluxia's office was on the opposite side of the Mansion from the front lot, so she couldn't make out the car.

It was a two story drop from here into a barren flowerbed. Luxia may have been transferred here, but he clearly hadn't had the time to poke his green thumb into every available orifice. She could probably make the jump down to that hard packed soil, but she sure as hell wouldn't be getting very far afterward.

Larxene turned from the window, frantically willing some brilliant strategy to pop into her head.

A glint of metal caught her attention from the floor just before her foot. One of the miscellaneous bits of office supplies that had been shaken off the desk. A letter opener, fashioned after a lotus blossom.

God, Luxia had the worst possible taste.

Larxene picked up the opener anyway, making her way to the door so as to jimmy the thing open any way she could.

"Come on, come on, come _on_!" she repeated, shaking the thin blade in the crack between the door and the wall, feeling for the lock, "There!"

But the word was barely out of her mouth when the lock clicked open of its own accord, the door swinging inward so quickly it nearly clipped her in the face.

Larxene wasted no time springing to her feet, launching herself at the figure in the doorway and pushing him with her out into the hallway, pinning him against the wall.

"Hey, calm down, Jesus!" the kid (he really did look like a kid, no older than Demyx) panted, struggling against her hands on his shoulders, "He wasn't kidding when he said you were nuts."

"That what he said, huh?" Larxene held the letter opener up to his neck, taking a brief sliver of pleasure in the fear that flickered across the kid's face when she pressed the flat edge of the blade against his skin, "I don't think I've seen you before."

"Y-you haven't. Listen..."

"I'm Larxene from Accounting, pleasure to meet you, now you are going to..."

"Could you please _drop_ the knife?"

"You don't know how this works, do you? You have to give me a reason."

"I'm trying to help you!" he practically spat the words into her face, shaking his steely blue hair from his face, as if to display the honesty in his eyes, "You want to see your brother don't you?"

Larxene lowered the knife, but didn't let go of the kid, "You know where Demyx is?"

He neither nodded, nor shook his head as he said, "Follow me. And for God's sake, stop _screaming_."

* * *

"Well, that can't possibly be good," Axel came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the hall, so of course Sora had no time to stop before barreling into him.

"Hey, could you watch it?" Axel told him, just as the sirens starting blaring up and down the corridor.

"What do you think it means?" asked Sora, looking up at the little white bulbs every few feet down the hall, flashing on and off.

"Well, I _did_ kinda cut you loose, but I guess it could be any number of a thousand things."

Sora looked back the way they'd come. If there had been some alarm around Vexen's little operating theater, wouldn't it have sounded the moment he and Axel had gone out the door?

"Shit."

Sora looked up at Axel, "What?"

"Whatever story she told, I guess they're not buying it."

"She?" Sora demanded, incredulous, "There's _more_ of you?"

"Well, yeah, I wasn't gonna break into the place alone, what do I look like?" Axel looked back and forth one more time, looking resigned, "Come on. We'd better move."

So Sora kept on at his heels through the darkened hall, past identical doors to either side, all marked with plaques he didn't have the time or the light to read.

"Wait, wait!" Axel hissed, stopping again.

"What now?"

"Listen."

"What? The alarms, yes, they're very loud, now could we just..."

Axel pressed a hand over his mouth, flashing him a meaningful look. Sora resisted the impulse to bite him, and listened. There were footsteps, somewhere along the hall, moving quickly, but not fast enough to be running.

Sora locked eyes with Axel, who gave a sharp nod toward the door on their left. Getting the idea, Sora nodded, in so doing, noticing the partially ajar door to their right.

"Axel!" he whispered his name.

"Shh!" Axel pressed his hand down harder against his mouth.

Rolling his eyes, Sora yanked the Earthshaker's hand from him and indicated the door to the right, then nodding to the one on the left, raising his eyebrows.

Axel's eyes lit up, his face splitting into a grin. He nodded, then slipped through the left door, as Sora darted behind the right, holding the door shut behind him.

The room beyond was dark as the hallway, but without the benefit of the flashing alarm lights. Through the thin sliver of glass in the door, Sora glimpsed a tall, wiry figure dressed in white coming down the hall. In the intermittent flashes of light, he looked like some silvery gray ghoul, out for vengeance.

"Hello? Hello?" Vexen's distinctive whiny screech echoed up the hall, "Is anybody there? Zexion! Zexion! Oh _worthless_ child..."

He was speaking into some kind of doohickey, a walkie-talkie or something, it was hard to tell in the limited light. Sora craned his neck to see better, and in so doing observed Axel reflected in the glass pane of _his_ door, practically pressing his face against the surface.

"Oh for the love of..." Sora rolled his eyes, jerking his head wildly so as to better catch Axel's attention. Once he got it, he began mouthing, " _Out of the way_!" gesturing for Axel to get out of sight before Vexen was upon them both.

Axel shrugged, looking clueless. Sora supposed he had to give Riku some credit in retrospect, he at least hadn't been suicidally stupid.

Vexen was getting closer, "I told them, I _told_ them, it wasn't worth the trouble, tempting fate! Does anyone ever listen to me? _No_ , of course not, I only have _two_ PhDs _and_ a fellowship at the University of..."

He stopped in the corridor right between the doors. Sora repressed a groan of frustration, as he turned to his right and came face to face with Axel behind the windowpane.

Axel's eyes widened as he plastered a chummy grin on his face that, were Sora in Vexen's place, would only have pissed him off more. Then again, Sora was plenty pissed off now.

Vexen moved as if to open the door, "What in blue..."

To hell with it. Knowing what he was doing was phenomenally stupid, but figuring he didn't have much choice, Sora barreled through his own door, right into Vexen's back, sending him careening forward with a high-pitched shriek.

Axel was polite enough to open _his_ door so that it whacked Vexen across the face before it could fall against it, "Good thinking, Skippy."

"You're an idiot,"

"Only to my friends," he looked down at Vexen, curled in his broken heap on the floor, "We should probably, like, lock him up in a closet or something, right?"

"See any closets?"

" _Double-damned indolents!_ " screeched Vexen through what sounded like a split lip and maybe a chipped tooth. He lifted his head, revealing a raw, red mess across his face, reaching out frantically with one hand, grabbing onto Sora's leg...

Axel's combat boot connected with his nose, and he sprawled out on the floor again, yelling brokenly.

"Well, don't just _stare_ ," Axel admonished Sora, already running off down the hall.

"Who _is_ that guy?" he asked as Sora made to follow him, already feeling a stitch forming in his side.

"Mad scientist."

"Seriously?"

"Well, he's not _happy_."

They reached a sturdy pair of doors at the end of the corridor, "Elevator," Axel sighed, "Shit, I was hoping we could find the stairs."

Farther down the hall, Vexen had tottered back to his feet, desperately scrambling toward them, blood from what was likely a freshly broken nose staining the white of his lab coat.

"We don't have time to be picky," said Sora, slamming his hand against the elevator button.

A little sign lit up above the elevator doors, in an obnoxious red color, like the numbers on his alarm clock back home: ' _B4_ ', with a little arrow pointing 'up' alongside it.

"B4?" repeated Sora.

"Not after," quipped Axel automatically.

"What's that, like a basement?"

"I thought we _were_ in the basement."

"I don't know, I didn't really have time to take in the scenery when they knocked me out and tied me up."

"You can't have _more_ than one base..."

Something was flung wildly into the space between them, falling limply to the floor.

"Is that a pen?" began Axel, before he was hit in the head with yet another flying office projectile: a slide rule.

"You stay where you are!" Vexen cried, staggering down the hall and rummaging madly through his pockets, " _Right_ where you are, or so help me..."

"You'll unleash the fury of Office Max?" Axel cocked an eyebrow, "Aw, mercy me, I'm pissing my..."

There was a distinct ' _ding_ ' as the elevator doors slid open. Exasperated, Sora grabbed for Axel's arm, "C'mon!" and tugged him inside.

He scanned the buttons in the panel alongside the doors, trying to keep his heart pounding out of his chest. A part of him kept insisting that, after all, Vexen had already sustained at least _two_ head injuries from him and his erstwhile accomplice, and even without them he couldn't possibly be _that_ threatening.

But the rest of him was enough equal parts terrified and sick of this place to take any more chances with anyone.

"They're not even labeled!" he exclaimed, looking the buttons over.

"Maybe they're stacked, like, from, top to bottom?"

"Fine, then which one are we?"

"Uh..." Axel looked out the doors, "Hey, dude! What floor is this?"

Vexen hurled ma calculator at him, which Axel ducked in no time flat.

"Oh, forget it!" and Sora slammed his hand down on the topmost button.

"How do you figure?" asked Axel as the doors closed on a protesting Vexen, still about two doors down the hall from them.

"I don't. But it'll put some distance between him and us, at least." he sighed, pressing his hands against his head as he leaned back against the wall.

"Long day?" asked Axel, crossing his arms.

Sora gave him a look.

"What? Honest question."

"Long frigging week," Sora replied at last.

Axel chuckled, "Same. But we made it this far."

Sora rolled his eyes, looking over at the little sign on the wall, its changing red numbers going steadily up and up as the elevator rose: ' _B2, B1, 1_..."

They were gonna be significantly higher up than the first floor at any rate. Sora sighed, shaking his head. Probably best not to think too much about it.

"You know what?" Axel said at last.

"What?"

He pointed at him, "I like you. If Riku hasn't apologized for running you down, I'll be sure to make him."

"I thought _you_ were the one driving?" but Sora couldn't help but smile.

Axel shrugged, "Point still stands."

The numbers kept going up...' _2, 3..._ ' and, just then, a horrible grinding noise sounded from all around them, the elevator scraping the sides of the shaft like a knife against a whetstone.

The elevator shuddered, a monstrous groaning sounding out from under their feet. Axel said something, but Sora couldn't really hear. The sound seemed to have pierced into his head, right into his skull. Groaning between gritted teeth, Sora pressed his hands to either side of his head, pressing his eyes shut.

"Kid?" Axel's voice was distorted, twisted, like he was calling from the top of some distant cliff, "Hey, kid, you okay?"

Sora tried to answer, but for whatever reason words wouldn't come.

"Kid... Sora? We're kind of..."

Sora felt the cold, solid surface of the floor beneath his knees. The elevator had stopped moving, but the doors hadn't opened.

 _What's going on?_ He thought feverishly, trying to fight the sudden pounding in his head, which had only worsened since the elevator had stalled. He felt weak, drained, where only minutes ago he'd been full of a frantic, nervous energy.

"Kind of a bad time to check out, Sora," he told him shaking him by the shoulder as if that would help anything, "I don't know if you noticed, but I think they're onto us."

"I..." Sora tried to speak, but found the words curdled on his lips "I can't..."

The elevator shook again, the lights flashing on and off. Axel muttered a curse looking up at the ceiling.

"There's a hatch," he pointed out, nodding to the square metal slab embedded in the top of the car, "Emergency exit. I can probably..."

The car shook again, as Axel reached up to turn the crank on the hatch, letting to swung downward to expose the musty recesses of the shaft above them.

"Yeah, I think..." Sora heard a little grunt, a clang, and he glimpsed Axel's legs hovering listlessly above the floor, "Got it!"

Sora forced himself to look up, though his surroundings appeared blurry, out of focus. He remembered vaguely, as if in a dream, the hatch in the Underworld, beneath the train tracks, Riku looking up at him, anxious.

Funny, Sora had had the upper hand on him then. Maybe he'd enjoyed it too much. Or maybe he'd _always_ had the upper hand, this entire time, and never realized it.

"Sora!" he saw the image, like a red halo, outlined against the comparative darkness of its surroundings, "Sora, I can help you up, but you're gonna have to get over the vapors first."

The vapors... Sora wanted to give this smug, scarlet prick a word or two, but he couldn't. He couldn't do anything. This was more than a headache and, whatever had brought it on, it now seemed to be jolting his whole body, paralyzing him.

Axel was reaching his hand down for him, Sora could tell that much. The elevator shook again. Sora thought he could hear voices on the other side of the doors, angry voices.

"You've got to help me out a little, kid," a note of something besides smart-ass salaciousness had crept into Axel's voice. Maybe concern, maybe fear.

And, funnily enough, the part of Sora that wanted to give Axel his hand was outweighed by the part of him that wanted, or _needed_ , him to stay curled up in a ball, here, forever.

Eventually, there was another little ringing sound, the elevator shook again, and the doors slid open. And when Sora looked up at the hatch one last time, the red halo had vanished, and there was nothing but darkness.

* * *

Everything felt different. Sight, space, sound, time...all of it felt both sped up and slowed down, so dim as to be almost non-existent and so saturated as to be overbearing.

Every crunch of old leaves and twigs beneath his feet boomed through his head like cannon fire, every rustle of wind through the trees above him keened into his ears like nails on a chalkboard.

Whenever he blinked, his surroundings would change: the woods, their hills and valleys, the rich autumn colors, would change without warning to dusty old hallways, grand staircases covered in faded velvet.

 _I grew up here_ , Riku would think wildly, _well, sort of_.

But the Hollow around him wasn't the Hollow of those few fleeting visits in his childhood. He knew that, he could _feel_ that.

And it didn't scare him anymore. The creaking timbers of the house, the shadows, the stench of old rose petals, the flowery, overpowering odor of a funeral parlor, of a church altar. He felt confident, strong, untouchable.

 _Not entirely_ the Voice purred, more like growled, from the back of his head, _That was his problem, you see. He thought nothing could touch him, but he underestimated her, like too many other idiots before him. But we've taken care of that haven't we?_

His mind was rent by those croaks, those wheezy breaths, the wide eyed desperation in those normally omniscient eyes.

Her neck had snapped in his fingers like a twig.

Riku could feel the screams in his throat, the revulsion just begging to explode from him, kept back by some invisible dam.

 _Don't act so repulsed. You don't need those feelings. A distraction, a burden. This shouldn't be a new experience for you._

No, Riku wanted to protest. This was different, this wasn't _him_. However he'd felt all these years, whatever feelings he'd had about the Hollow, about Maleficent, about where he'd come from and why she cared and what she was hiding from him...

 _You can keep up the lie, if you like. But you can't keep anything past me._

The hallway opened up into a bedroom. _The_ bedroom, his, and before it was his...

She was lying in the bed, covered almost up to her chin, a cascade of angel hair falling over the side like some kidnapped goddess in a Renaissance painting. Her chest rose and fall in an even, barely perceptible rhythm.

Sleeping. Sleeping and innocent. And he had to kill her, he had to, if he wanted to see her again, to hold her against him, hear her laugh, musical and assured as birdsong...

It was concrete walls around him now, flickering fluorescent lights, grimy with years of dust, never bothered with.

 _No. No, I don't want to see this. I_ don't _. Not again_...

He could hear her cries, her pleas, as clearly as if she were right beside him...or right _around_ him.

" _Terra, Terra please_!"

And he saw him, towering above her. Bronze skin, honey-brown eyes, arms as thick as tree trunks, and, framing that strong, handsome face, a mane of silver hair.

And he heard Aquas' pleas, as he saw Terra reach his hands out for her, to take her by the neck, and Riku realized he wasn't looking through Terra's eyes anymore, but his victim's.

His mother's.

" _This isn't you. It isn't_ you _!_ "

He felt the air, warm on his face, fresh, cool, as if trying to wake him up from whatever dream, whatever nightmare he was trapped in.

There was a gate in front of him. Thin black bars, wrought iron, an _X_ emblazoned across the center.

 _Home at last,_ the Voice guided Riku through the gate, across a wide forecourt, toward the old, grand house on the other side, lit a vague pinkish orange by the last light of day.

The impulse to fight back, to run away, to just cut out and not look back, was ebbing away more and more with each step he took.

It was getting easier to just let the Voice guide him, steer him on. It, at least, knew where to go, what to do. Less pain, less trouble. And it was nice, in some small, sad way, to not have to worry about what came next.

He took the steps up to the doors one at a time, that guiding impulse that pushed him forward guiding his limbs as easily as if he were a marionette on strings.

 _It's locked_ , he thought, though he wasn't entirely sure how he knew that, _I can't..._

 _Can't is the one thing we can't do._

It felt like his body had been charged with a hundred volts of electricity, every bit of him suddenly came alive with a searing, horrible energy.

He kicked at the doors once, twice, and they swung inward, one of them seeming to snap nearly off the hinges.

At once, alarms started blaring, bright white lights flashing on and off in the huge, but poorly lit main room of the mansion.

Riku stood there in the doorway, looking at the broken door hanging loosely from its mooring, feeling a dull ache from the toe of his boot, but nothing else.

 _I couldn't have...no, no way in hell could I have actually_ done _something like..._

The Voice overpowered him, _You can ponder the limits of human frailty later. There's much to be done_.

They... _he_ started toward the twin staircase at the end of the room. The alarms continued blaring. Somewhere up above he could hear raised voices, footsteps running on unoiled floorboards.

 _We're not alone_ , he thought frantically, desperately.

 _Of course not. There'd be no point to any of this if we were_.

Riku felt his legs moving faster, the stairs groaning in protest as he practically glided up them, to the terrace overlooking the main room.

There were two passages here, to the left and right, but Riku barely had time to look the left one over before he started right...

Where there was already someone waiting for him. Tall, broad, still as if he were carved from stone, as if he'd been planted there when the house was built, like some stone guardian outside an old temple.

His face was set in a permanent scowl, bushy black eyebrows knit together, thin lips curled into a grimace. One gloved hand gripped a long, blunt instrument hanging from his waist: a baton, it looked like.

 _Mall cop?_ He thought feverishly.

 _Your humor is refreshing_ , the Voice drawled, _Kindly stop it._

"This is private property, boy," said the Mall Cop, or whatever he was, "But something tells me you know that."

 _Xaldin_ , thought the Voice, _one of the traitors._

 _Traitor to me or you?_ But Riku supposed he must be getting pretty used to his built-in sidekick, because he anticipated to answer:

 _One and the same_.

"Still," Xaldin continued, beginning to advance with a steady deliberation toward Riku, "You've saved us a deal of trouble coming here on your own. What inspired this act of charity, I wonder?"

Riku wanted to speak, but found he couldn't. He wasn't really sure what to say, either, so maybe the Voice was doing him a favor.

"Your sprightly friend, perhaps?" for a second, Xaldin smiled, an expression ten times more terrifying than his surly scowl.

"S-Sora?" Riku's voice was hoarse and feeble, and instantly his throat stung for speaking, as if in reproach, but he couldn't help himself, "Sora's here?"

 _See how things work out?_ The Voice may as well have been smirking too.

"And lucky for it, I was all for snapping his neck and leaving him for the birds," he spoke so calmly, as if just describing a passing fancy, "But it's true you catch more fish with live bait than..."

Riku ran at him, heedless of the danger, of how much bigger Xaldin was, not even thinking _how_ he was going to fight him.

 _Well, I can break doors down with one kick all of a sudden, so that's something_.

He was steps away from Xaldin when something clicked in his head. Not the Voice, but a _hum_ , like some synapse that had been triggered.

Riku dropped to his side and, on the palms of his hands, _slid_ into Xaldin, closing the distance between them as Xaldin reached forward as if to grab him. Riku's feet connected with his legs in that same motion, causing the bigger man to stumble forward almost comically.

Panting, Riku looked over his shoulder at his aggressor, who had steadied himself, eyes burning with a new fire. Shaking some loose dreads from his face, he seized the baton from his belt.

"You wanna slap me around?" Riku asked, getting to his feet, a confidence he hadn't before known boiling to the surface, "I've been hit before. Worse."

"I'm sure you have," Xaldin said, placid, "All of you."

He spun the baton in his hand. There was a quick whooshing noise, and something cold and solid whacked Riku in the chest, sending him flying with abandon into the wooden railing on the terrace, the narrow columns creaking under the new weight.

Xaldin advanced on him, the baton in his hand no longer a baton, but a staff at least as tall as he was. "You won't fight like a man," he looked down at Riku, a smug satisfaction on his face, "I'll beat you like a dog."

Riku made to get out of the way, to roll or duck or, hell, try the sliding thing again, but he suddenly found he couldn't move anything.

 _Hold still_ , the Voice insisted.

 _I don't have much choice, do I?_

 _You do not._

Xaldin thrusted with the staff, pushing it against Riku's neck, pinning him against the railing. He was forced to look up into the bigger man's face, as he felt his eyes begin to water, his breath to become trapped in his throat.

"I'm sure you know we need you alive," he said smoothly, "Somewhere, I'm sure you're aware of that. Perhaps you even want me to kill you, put you out of your misery."

He pressed against the staff, jerking Riku's head back, "I can't kill you. But I can make you scream for death."

 _Don't just sit here staring!_

 _Are you_ kidding _?_

 _You know what to do_.

And Riku found he did, almost immediately. He reached up and grabbed the staff with both hands and, with an effort he couldn't even feel, lifted it over his head, taking Xaldin with it.

He heard a cry, a crash, and suddenly he was weightless, thrown into the air, clutching onto his end of the staff while Xaldin held fast to his. He had only enough time to see the gap in the railing he'd fallen through when he crashed against a clanging, clinking mess of crystal.

 _Let go._

And so Riku did, taking his hands off the staff and immediately seizing hold of the brass chain suspending the chandelier from the ceiling. The whole thing swung wildly as Xaldin soared past it, thrown off balance by the sudden drop of weight on the staff. Wind whistled in Riku's ears as the chandelier swung toward the wall.

He didn't need his new best friend to tell him what to do this time. He threw his feet out, connecting with the wall, even running along it, one hand on the chandelier.

If he could just drop down, if only he were low enough, if only...

There was a clang and a crash, bits of plaster raining from the ceiling. Riku realized he was falling, and, at a loss, threw his arms out in front of him, as if that would do any good.

He was caught before he hit the ground, the chandelier landing in a broken heap of glass and crystal just feet away.

His surroundings wavered in and out of focus, though he wasn't sure if it was dizziness, or just him being dragged between worlds again, some other latent vision trying to force itself into reality.

A reddish blur came into focus above him. Red hair... a feeling of sweeping, inexplicable relief came over him.

"You..." he croaked out the word, "you've gotta stop saving me."

"I won't make a habit of it," the voice wasn't the one he was expecting and, in the next bare moment, he realized he'd been mistaken.

The man who'd caught him yanked him to his feet with one huge hand, gesturing with the other to where Xaldin was lying across the room, panting and bruised, but looking more angry than anything else.

"I wonder if you'll ever get tired of trying to kill children," Riku's wary rescuer told him shortly.

"He's no child," spat Xaldin, "You know that as well as I.":

The man looked from Xaldin to the chandelier and back to Riku.

"No," he said at last, "I suppose he isn't."

And he threw Riku across the room. He barely had any time to consult the Voice in his head for any hot tips before he hit the wall.

* * *

"Could you, maybe, _explain_ to me..." Larxene shouted over the sirens which, in the narrow back stairwell, were obnoxiously magnified.

"I already told you," said her smart alecky escort, not even turning around to regard her, "No time to explain."

"There's been time for you to tell me there's no time. You can make time."

"Do you want to see your brother or not?"

"I'd like to throw you down the stairs to see how full of yourself you really are..."

"Good luck explaining that to Company Brass. If only I could be there to see it."

"What are you?" Larxene tried, figuring that, if anything, might get her somewhere, "Lab tech?" she indicated his white coat.

"I'm an intern."

"We don't _have_ interns."

" _You_ don't," he held open the door at the very bottom of the stairs, gesturing to the dimly lit hallway beyond, "In case you haven't noticed, this place is a whole different planet."

Larxene walked past him, looking up and down the concrete and cinder block corridor. The sirens were still audible, but distant. There must not be any alarms on this level.

"Why is it so cold?" she asked the intern as they started down the passage, passing one solid steel door every five feet or so.

"Underground."

"Sassy, real yuck yuck artist. Do you moonlight as a comic when you aren't interning for kidnappers?"

"Shut up and keep up," he told her curtly, looking over his shoulder, "Odds are, they've noticed you're not where you should be by now."

"What about you? Where are _you_ supposed to be?"

"Invisible, like a good intern," he stopped at a door near the end of the hall. There was no label on it, no ornament, nothing that indicated it as any different from the ten or so other doors on this floor.

"So...what? This is all part of the plan? The alarms, the chaos...just to get me alone so you could bring me down to the crypt?"

"Who said I set off the alarms?"

"You didn't?"

He didn't say anything, instead fiddling with a tiny digital keypad next to the door.

"So who did?" Larxene asked, louder, thinking again of Axel, wherever he was and whatever the hell he was up to,

"Given how everyone's suitably preoccupied, someone more annoying than you," he pushed the door open, this time not even pretending to be gallant so Larxene could pass through first.

She followed him, and was immediately hit by a frigid blast of cold air.

"What is this?" she asked, wrapping her arms around herself, "A freezer?"

"Something like that." he flipped a switch, and greenish blue lights buzzed to life in tiny wall sconces around them.

The room was small and spare as the hallway outside. The walls and floor were stained in several places with flecks of frost. Larxene even spotted an icicle or two forming on the ceiling.

"You're keeping Demyx here?"

"Well, not here specifically, but..."

"You know what I mean!" she ran a hand along the wall, drawing it back almost at once when she felt the stinging cold against her fingertips.

"Knowing him, he probably wasn't even wearing shoes. He'll freeze to death."

"You his sister or his mother?" the intern crossed the tiny room in three quick strides.

"His warden, if you hear him tell it," she rolled her eyes, getting impatient, "He's my responsibility, so if you have something cute to say about him and me, save it."

"I've got nothing cute to say about anybody," he told her smoothly, pulling a latex glove taut over one hand, and proceeding to give a spot on the wall a quick rap with his knuckles.

Before Larxene could question what kind of silly secret agent B.S this was, the spot of wall right next to where he'd knocked slide aside, none too effortlessly.

"A secret door?" she asked, incredulous.

"Secret elevator, more specifically. Come on."

"Elevator?" she followed him into the cramped steel box, sucking in her breath the better to fit, "I thought this was the lowest basement."

"It was," he replied, pushing the single button on the panel, "until about a year ago."

The door closed on them and, with a violent shudder, the elevator began to descend.

"This place..." Larxene began at length, "It's a research facility, right?"

"It is that."

"Vexen, then? He's in charge?"

"As he is ever so fond of reminding us," he smiled, but only briefly.

Axel's musings from the drive over, which had been pestering her ever since Lexeaus had gotten ahold of her, only echoed louder in her head now, with the thought of _X_ -Corp's Head of Research, Luxia's very least favorite board member.

"This place, it isn't just some holding cell," she said with a slow deliberation, some silly part of her afraid that if she said what she was thinking, it would only become true, "What the hell are you doing to..."

With another groan, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened.

"Welcome," the intern waved his arms in a gesture of mock grandiosity, "To the Chambers of Repose."

Larxene looked around the low-ceilinged round drum of a room, the ten thick black doors spaced out around it, "Repose?"

"You know Vexen and his poetic flair." he stepped into the middle of the drum, Larxene close at his heels, looking around at the doors.

It was cold here, and dark, the only light coming from a fixture in the dead center of the ceiling. Yet somehow that wasn't what bothered her most.

 _Ten doors..._

"It's not just Demyx," she said at last, "How many more are there?"

"Room to spare," but she wasn't sure if that was meant as a statement or a threat, "Or so I hear."

He moved to the door directly to the left of the elevator. There was a number 9 stenciled on it, in scratched white paint.

Larxene let out a breath, suddenly feeling weak at the knees. The air curled up from her mouth, little wisps of smoke. She found herself thinking wildly of Axel asking for a cigarette last night, in the living room, as she and Luxia systematically cross-examined him.

She hadn't even been thinking of her brother then.

"Fair warning," said the intern, fiddling with the door latch, "I don't think he's ready for visitors."

"What do you mean?" she asked, "What does that..."

He turned the latch, and the door opened, revealing the spare, closet-sized cell beyond. There was a light on the back wall, blue and flickering, like the one in the drum. But enough for Larxene to make out the figure huddled against the wall, long, thin arms wrapped around equally long and thin legs, encased in too thin ripped jeans.

"Dem?" Larxene prompted, stepping inside, "Demyx?"

He was speaking, she could hear him. It was a whisper, soft as a breath, and steady, almost rhythmic as he rocked back and forth, shivering in the cold.

 _Why won't he look at me?_

"Demyx, it's...it's me," she could feel her voice cracking, whatever her efforts to keep calm, to stay strong, "Larxene."

He was shaking so much, and his skin was so pale. She had a fleeting memory of a particularly cold winter, a blizzard that had blanketed all of Twilight in feet upon feet of snow. Axel, of course, had wanted to race some meatheads from the Wind Maker chapter, snowdrifts be damned.

And Demyx, ever their cheerleader, had gone with. No coat, of course not. Coats weren't cool.

He'd been sick for days, and Larxene had had to hang up her jacket and helmet long enough to play nurse. Axel never let her hear the end of it.

"You must be freezing," she told him, getting down one knee as she unbuttoned her jacket, a pilly tweed thing she'd bought for the office and would never even consider wearing to anyplace else.

"Here, take..." she blinked, feeling tears on her lashes, as she wrapped the jacket around his shoulders, "...take this."

He looked up at her, and Larxene saw her face reflected in his eyes, those big, innocent eyes, forever laughing, forever five years old.

They were different now. Wide and scared. Shocked. He looked at her, and his face didn't change. But he kept on muttering, and only now did Larxene realize what he was saying.

" _All had water run dry/Got nowhere to wash my clothes... All had water run dry/Got nowhere to wash my clothes..._ " over and over again, at a rapid, staccato pace.

"Demyx...Dem, it's...it's me." she put both hands on his shoulders, beginning to cry in earnest, "Don't you...don't you recognize me?"

But still he just kept on chanting that stupid, insipid song. Joylessly, listlessly, as if it were as natural as breathing.

"What's wrong with him?" Larxene asked, not looking away from his face, "What did you _do_?"

"I wish I could tell you," her erstwhile escort almost sounded sympathetic, "But like I said...I'm just the intern."

* * *

 _The movies make this look so much easier..._ Axel groused, moving hand over hand through the ventilation shaft, hastily shutting his eyes to prevent yet another dislodged spider web from violating his personal space.

The sirens were still keening, so clearly whatever disaster had called the Corporate Gestapo to arms hadn't yet abated. Axel still wasn't sure if this was all down to him, or if maybe Larxene hadn't been able to keep it cool under pressure.

Considering the way she'd nearly ripped Marluxia's head off earlier, Axel wasn't sure he'd put much faith in her temperance. Not that he'd ever tell her that, but...

"Ach, jeez!" he coughed up a veritable cloud of dust, the vibrations from this act shaking the sides of the shaft with an unsettling cacophony that there was no way would go by unnoticed.

 _If you're lucky, they'll pin it on party hard rats._

Or he'd turn a corner and find himself staring down some nimble security guard with a taser and a vendetta. Serve him right, Axel supposed, considering Sora...

 _Not your fault, man. Cut the shit, okay? If you stayed to help him, you both would've gotten caught, and then what?_

Axel wondered if Riku knew about his partner in crime's (?) chronic migraine problem, or if that was one of those out of nowhere, early onset stroke side effects.

 _Really goddamn early._

Maybe it had something to do with the handsome operating theater Axel had so deftly liberated him from. Larxene may have been skeptical, but Axel had seen enough of this place and its plethora of basements to confirm his suspicions there was some whacked out shit going on here.

Maybe Demyx was around here too, somewhere, strapped into one of those bulky dentist chair things, having God knows what done to him.

And maybe the same fate was waiting for Larxene, and him too, if they were caught.

 _Big Dugout reunion, at long last. Only one missing is Moonboy_.

Axel wondered where Saix was, right now. Nice and comfy at home, in bed slippers, sipping tea and staring at the moon? Or maybe working at the DPD, Squall Leonhart at his side, trying to get to the bottom of this pesky mystery once and for all.

Funny, really. Hard as Saix tried to break away, to move on with his life, he could never really be _free_ of Axel, could he?

Maybe once, not even that long ago, the thought would have brought a grin to Axel's face, but now it just made him feel worse.

Axel turned a corner, immediately finding himself scrambling for purchase on the sides of the shaft, as the floor beneath him sloped downward.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh _dammit_!" he lost his footing, sliding down the shaft, head over heels, and all parts in between clanging against all four sides of the vent as he went.

He turned his head in front of him long enough to see the ventilation grate come looming up from the bottom ahead of him, before he barreled into it with such force that he knocked it loose of its moorings and came falling out, sprawling on his chest on the table below.

"Hooo..." he panted, shaking a prodigious amount of cobwebs from his hair, looking across at where the vent had landed, dented and twisted in the corner, "Hard head pays off."

The room was small, spare and white, something like the lab where he'd found Sora, but somehow with even less character.

"Around and around again," he sighed, looking down at the tabletop he'd landed on. It was a cold, hard surface, frosted over. Glass, maybe.

There was a spindle-legged chair in one corner, opposite where the grate had fallen, and a spare, flat white door in between, almost blending in with the wall around it.

Probably locked, or else rigged to an even more annoying alarm.

Axel lifted himself up to get to his feet, his hands producing an irritating squeaking noise against the glass top. His hand came away wet. The glass wasn't frosted, it was freezing, covered in condensation. Axel looked down at the spot he'd cleared in the glass, and found someone else looking right back at him.

"Oh my God!" Axel practically rolled clear of the table, display case, coffin, whatever it was, scrambling backward on the backs of his hands.

Shoulders rising and falling in uneven breaths, Axel got back to his feet, moving closer to see the big blue eyes staring up at him, fixed in place.

"Holy shit..." he breathed, bending down over the glass top, gently rubbing away more condensation so he could get a better look.

It was a boy, a kid, younger than Demyx definitely. Blond hair, blue eyes, wearing a white hospital gown. He couldn't get a better look at his face, there was a mask covering it, some kind of breathing tube snaking out from his mouth.

"What the hell are they doing to you?" he heard himself ask, looking up and down the sides of the case. All smooth, cold, regular...

 _Bzztt..._

He pulled his hand back from the nearly invisible button he must have just pressed, stepping away as, with a sound like a pair of automatic doors opening, the glass top of the case swung open, producing a dense cloud of steam from within.

"Um..." he moved closer, steeling himself, "okay then..."

One more step, another, and he was looking down at the boy in the box. His eyes stared back at him, wide and unblinking, as if completely unaware what was going on around them. But he kept breathing, steadily in and steadily out.

"Surprises around every corner, huh?" he prompted without much humor, flicking a finger against the breathing tube, if only to see if he could get a reaction, any reaction.

No luck.

"So...what?" Axel looked the tube up and down, tracing it to the side of the box, where it led down into who knew where, "This how they feed you, or something? Or is it all some whacked out drug cocktail? Because, no offense, you look pretty bugged out..."

"Mmph!" a short grunt, almost inaudible, muffled by the tube. Axel bit his lip, "So...you can hear me?"

"Mmph!"

"You want something?"

"Mmph! Mmph!" the boy didn't move a muscle. If Axel didn't know any better, he'd have thought the noises were coming from someplace else entirely.

"Look, you keep doing that, you're probably gonna hurt yourself," he looked at the breathing tube, at the mask secured around the boy's mouth and nose. His eyes were still not blinking, but Axel imagined there was a heightened awareness in them. He was looking up at him at any rate.

"You want something?"

The boy looked at him, a real, long look. Axel couldn't read emotions, he wasn't even sure if there _were_ any emotions being represented here, but he felt he understood all the same.

"You sure?" he flicked the breathing tube again.

The boy said nothing in return, just kept his eyes on Axel.

 _The thing might be keeping him alive_ , he thought, _Or, maybe, it could be killing him slowly. This place isn't exactly up to HIPPA standards._

"Because, you know...I don't exactly have the best track record with sidekicks."

Realizing that trying to be funny was completely moot in this scenario, Axel gritted his teeth, wrapped his fingers around the tube and, squeezing his eyes shut, yanked it clear of the boy's mouth.

The kid let out a great gulping gasp of air, his whole body jutting forward as if shocked. He had a kid's face, alright. Soft and round, innocent. But not Demyx's willfully clueless innocence. This was different. Infantile. Broken.

But Axel didn't have much time to ponder this adolescent lab experiment's psychology. No sooner had the tube been yanked off, the whole room went dark.

"Oh, that can't possibly be good."

New sirens began blaring, steelier and screechier than the usual ones. The lights began flashing, bright, lurid red.

The boy was looking around, big eyes wide and watery, mouth agape, shoulders still heaving with desperate pants.

"No good deed goes unpunished, I guess," Axel quipped, "No good _fucking_ deed."

He turned to the boy, "Look, kid, I don't know if you know what's going on here. I don't really know what's going on here either. But it's looking like we're both in the shit now, so you're gonna have to cooperate with me, yeah?"

The boy stared at him.

"You can't talk, can't you?"

No answer.

"Jesus, this is so fucked up..." Axel breathed before adding, louder, "I don't know if I'm helping you or just making your life worse. But if you wanna get out of here, you're gonna have to stick with me. Got it?"

Still no answer, but the boy did swing his legs over the side of the box, easing himself to his feet and immediately swaying drunkenly as he did so, landing on bony knees.

"Whoa, whoa..." Axel hurried over to the kid's side, "You alright there, Sleeping Beauty?"

"S..." a hoarse, feeble rasp, "...sleeping. Sleeping."

"Well, you're no Dickface," Axel nodded, "But we're getting there. Now, stay close, we don't have much..."

A harsh beeping echoed through the room, accompanied by the sound of the door sliding open behind them.

"Unhand the boy!"

"I never handed him in the first place," Axel said, a part of him wondering why he was even bothering with the badass talk for this guy, "Something tells me I can't say the same about you, Dr. Feelgood."

Sora's mad scientist captor leered, shaking his hair out of his face as he retrieved a walkie talkie from his coat pocket.

"I'm here with an intruder," he spoke into it, one eye on Axel all the while, "Convalescent room, he's got the Initiate. If either of you gorillas are still cognizant, kindly drag your knuckles up..."

Let it never be said that Axel couldn't act under pressure, however stupid the action. In a single fluid motion, he grabbed the boy by the shoulder, dragged him closer to him, and held his newly drawn pocketknife up to his neck.

"I'd think twice before calling the hounds," he warned, "Unless you want me to put Patient X back on ice."

The boy didn't struggle against Axel's grip, just stared at the blade of the knife against his throat, more curious than afraid.

That didn't make Axel feel any better though.

"Don't you dare!" the scientist shrieked, taking a step closer.

Axel pushed the knife closer to the boy's neck, listening to his sharp intake of breath.

" _You're a lunatic_ ," the words came to him as clearly and suddenly as if he was right back there again, sitting on that creaky old couch in that dusty, musty, beautiful junk heap he'd called a second home, " _Totally crazy._ "

" _One man's crazy is another man's genius. Come on, Moonboy. Don't tell me I_ scare _ya?_ "

And Saix had looked away from him for just a second, a fraction of a second that, at the time, Axel had barely noticed and now, years later, could do nothing but fix on, " _Not me._ "

"Put down the radio," Axel continued, "Then we'll talk."

Face going ghostly pale, the scientist lowered the walkie to the floor.

"You ever _watch_ a cop show?" Axel cocked an eyebrow, "Come on, man."

With a muffled expletive, the scientist kicked the walkie talkie Axel's way. He nodded in approval, "That's better."

"I don't think you really comprehend just what you've blundered yourself into, young man," the scientist continued.

"Yeah, that's kind of a talent of mine."

"If you honestly think you'll be allowed to get away from this place..."

"Never said anything about 'allowed', I'm kinda good at breaking rules..."

"You'll be lucky if you ever see the light of day again..."

"Where's Demyx?" Axel spoke over him, "Demyx. Your goons snatched him up in Twilight this morning and brought him here. So if you were gonna spin some bullshit, please don't, it's been a _bitch_ of a day."

The scientist rolled his eyes, "Demyx... No worries about your other boy sidekick, or did you two have a couple's spat on the elevator?"

Axel thought back to Sora, hunched up and groaning, on the floor of the elevator. He figured this was a game, the scientist trying to get into his head, psych him out.

"One at a time." he said, not as firmly as he would've liked.

"Quite the gallant, are we?"

"I've been called worse. Answer the question."

"Or what? You'll cut the boy's throat?" the scientist laughed, a high, hysterical laugh, "More power to you."

"What ever happened to 'don't you dare'?"

The scientist hesitated for only the briefest of moments, his smirk faltering, before he said, "The boy's a piece of a puzzle, a link in a chain. One that your upstart musician friend has recently joined as well. You take a piece from the puzzle, you break the chain..." he shrugged, "The result won't be pretty for the pieces left behind."

Axel loosened his grip on the knife, "What are you doing to them?"

"Oh...this and that," he smirked, "If you're so curious, I'm sure I could arrange for a new link in the chain. It'll be the best hope you have, I promise you that."

"Oh, yeah?" Axel asked.

"Oh," he didn't look at all impressed, "Yeah."

"Hm..." Axel looked down at the floor, the walkie talkie by his feet, "So did you ever get your calculator back?"

The scientist blinked, "What?"

"Your calculator? Remember, you tossed it at me when Skippy and I were breaking for the elevator..."

"I don't know what that has to do with any..."

Axel kicked the walkie with all the force he had, sending it crackling and grumbling through the air to connect against the scientist's head, throwing him off balance.

"Okay, okay, come on!" Axel pocketed his knife, grabbing the boy by the arm and leading him past the staggering scientist and out the door.

"Gonna be honest," he told the kid as they ran, " _Really_ wasn't expecting that to work..."

The short passage beyond the room opened onto a narrow, dimly lit staircase. Axel noticed by now that the first sirens had been turned off, even if the ones he'd triggered were still making their beautiful music.

"So, full disclosure..." he continued, starting down the stairs, "I wasn't gonna do anything to you. Really. I break hearts, not necks. You know the type. Maybe."

Although something told Axel he could've cut off the kid's pinkie and he'd still follow him, oblivious.

"I'm trying to find my friend," he continued, "Demyx, we go way back and if they'd done to him what they did to you, then..."

He came to an abrupt stop, nearly pitching forward head over heels. Footsteps, clear and echoing on the stairs, coming up to them, and fast.

"Probably Meatheads 1 and 2," he breathed, thinking of the square-jawed ginger who'd caught Larxene, and the silky-voiced giant he'd overheard Mad Scientist talking to, "New plan."

He turned tail and, the kid still in tow, started up the stairs...where the scientist was waiting for them, on the landing they'd left.

"You stop right there!" he began, pointing the damaged walkie-talkie as if it were a gun.

"Nice try, chief," said Axel lightly, making sure to ram him with his shoulder as he passed, sending the scientist tumbling down the stairs with an appropriate air of patheticness.

"I don't suppose you know where this leads, do you?" he asked his companion, not even waiting a second for the inevitable non-answer.

"Course you don't."

There were no other doors on the stairs. The Mansion wasn't that big from what he'd seen of it outside. Then again, given there were at least ten basement levels, it was entirely possible they were still underground...

And Demyx was in here somewhere, in who knows what kind of state. And Larxene too, already caught. And Sora, going through whatever the hell he'd been going through when Axel abandoned... _left_ him.

"There!" he indicated the door at the very top of the stairs, a bright red placard on it labeled, ' _ACCESS_ ', just not what kind.

He pushed open the door, walking out into the clean night air.

"Beautiful..." he said dryly, looking around at the narrow strip of solid ground between the left and right facing sides of the roof, which sloped downward in foreboding waves of red slate.

"Because a fire escape would've been too generous," Axel muttered, moving up and down the narrow walk, trying not to look too long over the side at the courtyard three stories below.

"Okay, so..." he looked around, feeling a cold night wind tug at his clothes, at his hair, "New _new_ pl..."

"There!" the scientist appeared in the doorway, the giant who had caught Larxene right behind him.

"Any ideas, Sleeping Beauty?" Axel asked, sotto voice.

Of course, he didn't get an answer for that. The kid was standing at the edge of the roof, just where it sloped down to the barren garden behind the Mansion. His short, unevenly chopped hair was tossed this way and that by the wind, his hospital gown catching around knobby knees. He was probably freezing, if he had any concept of hot and cold, considering the state Axel had found him in.

He stood there, staring at the woods, at the outline of the mountains beyond them. Their pursuers were drawing closer, the scientist looking like he'd gladly rip their heads off himself.

"Ideas," the boy said the word shortly and simply, but with more conviction than he'd said his last word.

"Yeah. Yeah, ideas. Got any?"

"Ideas," the boy repeated, before promptly jumping off the roof.

"Holy sh— _eezus_!" Axel swore was incomplete, as the boy grabbed for his arm as he fell, taking him with him.

He heard the scientist cry something out from the roof above them, but to be honest Axel wasn't really paying attention to that given his current predicament.

Everything was weirdly silent, even the air whistling past him as he fell. An odd sense of calm descended on him, all thoughts of Larxene, Demyx, Sora, Riku, every other part of this aggravatingly complicated puzzle vanishing...even his very likely imminent death.

All he could see was the scrawny little kid he'd rescued, holding with surprising firmness to his arm, as his face lit up, into something almost resembling a smile.

* * *

 **A/N:** I try to make up for my absences with content. Well, that's not quite true, I already outlined this whole chapter before the extra week hiatus.

Still...lot of balls rolling. Chapter 20 shares the 'Monday night' time frame with this chapter, so expect it next Friday!


	20. Same Deals, Different Devils

Chapter 20, Same Deals, Different Devils

 **A/N:** And here's Chapter 20! If you think last one was full of twists, turns and developments...well, yes you were right. This chapter also has twists, turns and developments.

Forgot where I was going with this. Ahem...

* * *

There was a metronome on the desk. Saix didn't understand why there was, or what purpose it could serve beyond making everybody extraordinarily aware of the slow march of time and the imminent approach of mortality, but it was still there. And it was annoying the hell out of him.

But it wasn't on him to _look_ annoyed, that was for the guy he was supposed to be helping in his capacity as a public servant.

Ha.

"You're sure you didn't _see_ your attacker?" he asked calmly, resisting the urge to prop his head up in one hand.

"Which one?" the bedraggled teenager, Hayner, cocked his head to the side.

"There was more than one?"

"Well...I mean, probably? Like, I remember hearing the door open, and then someone knocked me out, but it sounded like there was _another_ someone, and that was probably the one that nabbed Dem..."

"But you didn't _see_ either of them?"

"I already told you, no."

He hadn't already told him, but Saix was well beyond the point of wanting to argue, especially given the content of the scant information they'd gotten.

"And you and your friend...you were there alone?"

"At the Dugout, yeah. It's sort of our spot."

 _Our spot_... Saix sighed. He hadn't thought about the Dugout in a long time, much less imagined it would still be around, that it hadn't been swallowed up by the rest of the town, bought by some urban renewal investor and replaced with a pricey roadside cafe or a record store or a fondue parlor.

That it had survived long enough for some new generation of roadside indignants to claim it was oddly heartening, assault and kidnapping notwithstanding.

"You're sure you're telling me everything?" Saix asked, putting his pen down as if to demonstrate openness.

"Yeah," said Hayner, "yeah, man, of course. Look, Demyx is like my brother, I want you to find him."

Saix found himself believing the kid, even as he noted there was some sort of hesitation in his eyes, some conscious pause, like he was indeed keeping something from him, for whatever reason.

But he understood treating Demyx like a brother. A particularly irritating little brother who you couldn't help but want to slap on the back as much as you wanted to thunk him on the head, but a brother all the same.

"We will," Saix told him simply. He figured Yuffie might have put a grin and a laugh onto it, put him more at ease, but he wasn't really up for it.

"I swear, why do people even _buy_ answering machines if they're not gonna use them?" speak of the devil, Yuffie came striding into the office, logbook in one hand and a half-eaten Monte Cristo sandwich in the other.

"...Oh," she trailed off when she saw Hayner, "Sorry."

"We were just wrapping up," said Saix, looking at Hayner with a little nod.

"You sure?" Hayner actually sounded disappointed.

"Well, unless there's something else you wanna tell me..."

"No!" he got to his feet, "Nah. I...I've done that. Just...um...just find him, okay?"

"That's the plan," Saix assured him.

Hayner nodded again, as if to affirm this to himself, turning around and hurrying out. Alone, Saix looked at Yuffie and, putting on his surliest Ratcliff face, knocked very slowly on the desktop.

"Very funny," Yuffie gave the door a light kick with her heel, letting it swing shut behind her, "I didn't think he was still here."

"He was very thorough."

"It's been four hours."

Saix shrugged. Sighing, Yuffie plopped down in the seat Hayner had vacated, "What did he have to say?"

"I said he was thorough, not helpful." Saix sighed, "What's this about the answering machine?"

"129 East Market, right?" Yuffie didn't wait for an answer, "I've been leaving calls all day. No answer."

"So that's it then?" he leaned back in his chair, "We're paying them a visit?"

"Someone is," Yuffie's requisite smile here became considerably fixed.

"What? I've only been grilling the kid for half a day..."

"It's not our case, Saix," she didn't look entirely happy about it.

"Finding Axel is."

"This isn't Axel,"

Saix shook his head, "You don't think it's strange that we're looking for Axel, and..."

"His ex's brother goes missing? Yeah, sure, I think it stinks to high heaven and back. But it's not my call."

"Do I get a guess who _is_ stopping by the place?"

"Look, don't hold it against..."

"Boobs."

"Boobs," Yuffie repeated, "She's a good detective, Saix. She'll do her job, find out what's going on. We'll move on."

"Move on..." he looked around, finding himself inadvertently hypnotized by the metronome, "Three teenage boys."

"Well, 19's sort of borderline teen, at least that's how I always saw..."

"And Axel's managed to get himself caught up with all three of them," he shook his head, "Only him."

"Well, in his defense, he and this Demyx kid go back sometime before all this."

"You don't say?" he smiled dryly, but couldn't make it stick, "He used to hate Dem, you know."

"Hate who?"

" _Dem_. Demyx.

"Shoulda figured."

"He would just tag along with his sister," Saix continued, "whenever we went out. Axel thought it was the _biggest_ drag."

"Had a reputation to uphold, huh?"

"He thought he was annoying."

"Axel thought someone was annoying?"

"Yeah, I told him he didn't really have room to talk."

Yuffie pursed her lips, in thought, "So...Axel has some sort of grudge against Demyx?"

"What? No, no, no..." he couldn't keep back a short laugh, "He loves him. We all do. Did." he cleared his throat, "After a while he sorta became our...mascot, I guess."

"Huh," Yuffie crossed her arms, "Squall would chew my ear off for saying this, but you're describing the cuddliest biker club in history. I'm tempted to ask for my own jacket."

"It wasn't the whole club. Me, Axel, Demyx, Larxene...we were Earthshakers, yeah. Well, not Dem, Larxene wouldn't hear of it, but..." he shrugged, "When we were _together_ , it wasn't just the bikes. It was the Dugout."

"Your very own Walden Pond." Saix gave her a look and Yuffie shrugged, "Sure, I bombed English, but I know the great stoners of history."

"If Demyx is gone, Yuffie...if something happened to him..." he ran his hands down the length of his face, "It wasn't Axel. That's all I know."

Yuffie was quiet for a while, "I believe you. Sure, I've got no evidence, but I think you're right. Axel, he might be stupid, hotheaded..."

"No impulse control..."

"But he would never hurt his friends. And if Demyx is his friend..."

"Something's going on here, Yuffie. I don't know what, but..." he got up, arms crossed, pacing the room.

"I'm sorry,"

He looked up at her, brow furrowed, "What? Why?"

"Bringing you back here," she set the crumby wax paper down on the desk, apparently not giving a second thought what Tifa would think of it, "It was stupid of me, I should have realized this stuff can't be easy..."

"No. Come on, Yuffie, don't do that. If I'm angry at anybody, it's me."

"For coming with?"

"For not coming sooner. Yeah, what happened between Axel and me, that was rough, but..." he bit his lip.

" _Hate me all you want. I feel pretty shitty about myself already. Just... just think about the others, okay? It's not their fault..._ "

"...I had something here too, once. I don't know, maybe if I hadn't been so quick to uproot my life..."

"None of this would have happened?"

"Please tell me that's the stupidest, most self-important thing you ever heard."

"I could..." she shrugged, "But I've worked with Squall Leonhart on a regular basis for five years, so I've dealt with my fair share of cop angst."

"Squall is different."

"Maybe. But angst is angst when you get right down to it," she shrugged, "Something happens, we regret it, we tear ourselves apart, and then it all ends up being our fault until we forget what actually happened in the first place."

"You speaking from personal experience?"

Yuffie balled up the wax paper, lobbing it neatly over her shoulder into the wastebasket, "You're a good guy, Saix. And so is Squall. When bad things happen to good people, they put all the responsibility, all the blame, on their shoulders. Maybe because they're so used to responsibility, or maybe because they want to protect the people they care about from the same baggage..."

"You think I'm protecting somebody?"

Yuffie smiled one of her quintessentially Yuffie smiles, "I don't think you can help it."

"Jeez, at this rate, I might as well be charging you two rent," Tifa strode in, in full uniform, her wavy brown hair pinned up in a surprisingly severe bun.

"Ponyboy give you anything new?"

"Ponyboy?" Saix smiled despite himself, "No, he didn't. One attacker, maybe two. He doesn't know why they took Demyx and left him."

"I gave _X_ -Corp a call," Tifa continued, paying him little mind as she rummaged through the drawers of her desk, "On hold with Accounting for God knows how long, and all I get is neither of them clocked in today."

"Larxene and her boyfriend?"

"I'm heading over to the house, see what I can find..." she paused, eyes narrowing over Saix, "You go way back, right?"

"Me and Larxene?"

"You and Axel," Tifa put her hands on her hips, "What's the story, there?"

Saix noticed Yuffie shift from one foot to the other in the corner, "What's it matter? From what I can tell, I'm suddenly _persona non grata_ on this case."

"I'm sure I'd be really stung by that, but my Spanish was never that good," she smiled thinly, "Look, don't take it so personal. I'm only asking out of curiosity. It's not every leather jacket thug that decides to walk the thin blue line."

"If you were looking for an excuse to call me a 'thug', congratulations. Very polite."

"Could you two both stop sniping?" Yuffie asked, turning next to Tifa, "What's it matter what happened between Saix and Axel? It was a bajillion years ago, and it's got no bearing on any of this."

"Look, I don't mean to ruffle those blue feathers of yours," Tifa rolled her eyes, "I'm only asking because the Comish has been pretty adamant."

"You've been talking to the Commissioner about me?"

"You? No, I've got a job to do, in case you've forgotten. He brought it up."

"Indeed I did," a man stepped into the doorway, tall, limber, dressed in a white linen suit and navy blue shirt beneath, like some middle-aged bachelor taking a drive down the Florida coast.

He looked from Yuffie to Saix, dark blue eyes smiling even as his face wasn't, "The Destiny Detectives. Sorry I wasn't here to welcome you this morning, but things have been busy."

"There's an understatement," Yuffie brightened up at once, squaring her shoulders and inclining her head in a little bow of respect, which Saix hastily moved to copy.

"I'm Yuffie Kisigari, and this is..."

"Of course," he reached out a hand to shake Yuffie's, smiling like a true gallant, "I'm Cecil Harvey, ruler of this roost, for better or worse."

"Well, you've certainly got a better grip on it than our roost guy," Yuffie quipped, "Don't tell him I said that."

Harvey chuckled, looking past her to Saix, "You're the ex biker?"

"And a couple of other things," Saix shook his hand, "Good to meet you."

"Remind me, I never arrested _you_ , did I?"

"Uh...no," Saix shook his head, unable to hide a flush of embarrassment.

"Now, now, nothing to get worked up, over. We all have our adventurous youths, as I'm sure Detective Lockhart's been telling you."

"Eh, we've barely just scratched the surface," said Tifa with perhaps a bit too much airiness.

"I was wondering," Harvey continued, "If I might have a private word."

"With...with me?" asked Saix, "I mean..."

"You're not in trouble. And of course you're well within your rights to re..."

"No," said Saix, "I mean...of course. Whatever you need."

Harvey smiled, looking over at Tifa and Yuffie, "If you ladies would excuse us. This'll only be a moment."

Yuffie didn't look entirely convinced, giving Saix a sidelong look as if to say, ' _You sure this is fine_?'

But Saix didn't think he had any position to refuse here, whatever the Commissioner claimed. He gave her a little smile, which Yuffie returned with a badly hidden 'thumbs up', following Tifa out of the office

Harvey wasted no time, "How old are you, Detective?"

"How...how old am I?"

"I promise, there's a point to this."

"Er...22."

"22," he repeated, nodding his head, "I remember 22."

Now that Harvey had obliquely referenced his age, Saix couldn't help but wonder how old he was, exactly. Despite the steely gray hair, his face wasn't over-wrinkled, and his eyes had a strange vitality to them, a young man's vitality, just with more purpose than any young man Saix had ever known.

Except, maybe, Squall. Something to think about.

"And you've been with the DPD for one year, two?"

"Two."

He nodded, "Quite a decision, especially for someone fresh out of the Earthshakers."

"To tell you the truth, Commissioner, I was never really that invested in the Earthshakers. I kind of...got pulled into it. It wasn't my thing."

"That's how it is. We get pulled into things for all sorts of reasons. Loneliness, loyalty, love... And not just biker gangs. Some people join the police for those same reasons. Sense of belonging."

"It feels like you're psycho-analyzing me."

"Perhaps I am. Sorry." he smiled thinly, "Don't let Detective Lockhart's temperament wear you down. She's had her share of experiences with belonging. I don't speak from any sense of knowing, but maybe you two will find some things in common."

Saix decided not to comment on that, "You wanted her to ask about Axel and I?"

"Well, I didn't put her up to it, but...yes, I did intimate to her that it might be worth a thing or two getting your measure of things. That is why Detective Kisigari brought you here, isn't it?"

"So she told me."

Harvey looked at him for some time, in silence, before saying, "Nothing defines us quite as well as our friends do. We understand them sometimes, more than they understand themselves. And when they disappoint us...we feel we've disappointed ourselves."

Saix sighed, "I really don't want to talk about it, Commissioner. If you don't mind."

"Of course not. I would never make you. But I think that...whatever your friend is running from, it probably began some time before he became complicit in a jailbreak."

He turned around to look the older man up and down, "It feels like you're trying to convince me of something."

"Am I?" he nodded toward the door, "You'll have to ponder that. Detective Lockhart will be leaving about now. You won't want to miss her."

Saix shook his head, not understanding, "I'm...I'm sorry?"

"Please," Harvey held the door open, nodding for Saix to walk out past him, "don't be."

* * *

It wasn't dreams that woke Squall up this time. He'd run out of dreams a while ago, those hazy memories that had clouded up his thoughts like persistent, heady smoke.

No, what snapped Squall out of the smothering, heavy blackness of sleep was the pain. A sudden, sharp jolt of it that racked every part of his body from head to toe, forcing his eyes open, breath entering and leaving his lungs in sharp, stabbing jolts.

He was lying down, that was the first thing he noticed, lying down and looking up at a naked light bulb, flickering with a dissonant buzzing noise.

The room was concrete, featureless, cold. A bunker. He could see his breath turn to mist as it left his mouth.

 _Well, you're not dead,_ he told himself, _Yet. They must want you for something_.

Squall could only imagine what, and none of those imaginings led anywhere good.

Though he had dim recollections of being strapped down whenever he'd come to before, he found he could move his arms and his legs without much trouble.

 _Stay calm, Lionheart_ , a voice that sounded frighteningly like Rinoa's told him, _No rookie of_ mine _is gonna shut down and give up. You can move, so_ move _._

"Easy for you to say," he muttered, forcing himself to sit up anyway, "You're just a voice in my head."

Weird that he'd never _heard_ Rinoa like that before. As much as he may have remembered her or thought of her and their times together, especially these last few days in this literal hellhole, he'd never had her 'speak' to him like this.

Maybe he was going nuts after all. Years of playing the cool, disaffected cop catching up to him at last. Yuffie would be thrilled.

He swung his legs over the side of the table and felt his knees begin to buckle beneath him. Biting in a moan, he gripped the edge of the table to steady himself, pressing his eyes shut.

There was something wrong with him. Every time he tried to move, some tremor would pass through him, as if in protest, a warning not to try anything further.

His duster was draped over a thin, spare chair in the corner. Squall had no idea what had happened to his shirt, or his boots for that matter, but the jacket was something, he supposed.

As he pulled the duster on around his shoulders, Squall caught his reflection in a grimy glass-fronted cabinet against the wall. He was pale, bleary-eyed, dark circles, the whole nine yards. Bruises and scrapes that no doubt came from the Coliseum, some of them still looking pretty fresh.

And...on his chest, right in the middle, placed so that his eyes were drawn to it...a scar. A long, thin, jagged scar. One line stretched across the middle of his chest from left to right, and another crossing it from the other side, like a little kid's sloppy attempt at the letter _X_.

 _X_... The Beautiful Creature lying face down in the water, blood seeping out from the _X_ in her back, freshly dead but no sign of her killer, her marker...

Squall traced his finger along the edges of the scar, but quickly drew back. The skin around it was hot, hot where the rest of him felt cold and clammy. He looked back at his reflection, noted the sallowness to his face, the tangled mess of his hair, the marks on his wrists and, below the cuffs of his jeans, his ankles where he'd been tied down.

"What did they do?" he asked, not even realizing he was speaking aloud.

Turning away from the glass, Squall scanned the rest of the room. There was a door, sturdy and steel. Undoubtedly locked, and with no handle nor keyhole on this side. He knew better than to try and force it, not in the state he was in now.

There was another exit, or at least an entry. A doorway, low and shadowy, across from the main door. Figuring there was nothing else for it, Squall ducked inside...

"Seifer."

The Earthshaker that started this whole mess was lying face up on a rusty table much like the one Squall had found himself on, lit from above by another faulty bulb.

He was undressed too, just his faded gray jeans, rolled up above the ankles. Squall could make out the thin red marks where he'd been bound.

"Seifer!" Squall tried it again, louder, coming closer. He was lying still, eyes closed, breathing shallow.

Funny, really, how different Seifer looked like this, without that cocky smirk or that smug glower of superiority. For the first time, he looked more like an adult, and less like some kid off the street trying to be a king.

He was beaten and banged up too. Scrapes on the side of his neck, an ugly bruise on his forehead just under his hairline. And, on his chest...

"Oh no."

It was the same scar, identical in every respect, just switched around from Squall's, the slant of the _X_ facing the other way.

Squall ran his hand down the length of his scar, feeling again how warm it was, how it stung. He was so caught up, almost hypnotized, he wasn't even aware he was reaching for Seifer's scar until his fingertips met the rough, sandpapery texture of the tissue.

" _You're a lot like him. You just got a little luckier than him._ " her eyes had almost begun tearing up as she said that, " _I don't know why I can see it and you can't._ "

Seifer's body shook beneath Squall's hand, his eyes opening as he let out a horrible, pained cry.

"Seifer!" Squall tried to calm him, "Seifer, it's okay, it's just..."

But Seifer just kept screaming, reaching out with both hands so that they were closed around Squall's neck.

"What did you do?" he cried out through gritted teeth, red eyes, "Leon, what did you _do_?"

 _Oh fuck_ , which was about the most measured opinion Squall found he could give on the situation, as he tried to pry Seifer's hands from him.

"Snap out of it!" he wheezed, "Seifer, snap out of it!"

"Traitor! Frigging _traitor_!"

"You're not thinking straight! That's over, Seifer, over!"

He tried to push Seifer off him, but Seifer pushed back, sending Squall to the floor, Seifer leaning over him, staring into his eyes, letting Squall see everything, the hatred, the betrayal, the fear...

"You _killed_ her!"

Which was all Squall needed to hear. With a mammoth grunt, he pushed forward, sending Seifer falling back against the table, where he hit his head.

"You wanna say that again?" he asked quietly, as Seifer blinked rubbing his head.

"L-Leon?" he asked softly, in a very different voice.

"Don't try it."

"What's going on? I...fuck, all these crazy dreams..."

"Write 'em down. I'm sure the prison therapist'll love to hear them."

"The hell's your problem, man?" he looked around the room, as if seeing it all for the first time which, maybe, he was, "Whoa." his eyes stopped at Squall's scar, "What happened to you?"

"I was gonna ask you the same question," he nodded to indicate Seifer's own scar.

"Wh..." Seifer looked down at it, "Holy shit. Wait, I...I don't even remember getting..."

"What _do_ you remember? Try to keep it recent."

Seifer gave him a look, "What? You thought of her too, didn't you?"

"I thought we agreed. You don't mention her."

"Cut the sheep shit, Leon," he fixed Squall with a stare, as if challenging him to protest the name, "Whatever Ri was, she sure as hell was nobody's pet. I can say her name and so can you. And we've got bigger shit to deal with anyway, don't we?"

"Fine," he closed his eyes, trying to banish the lingering thought of Rinoa from his mind, "What do you remember?"

"Nothing," he shook his head, "Not since we blew a hole in Hades's gladiator games."

" _You_ blew a hole in Hades's gladiator games."

"Ooh, credit where it's due," he smirked, humorlessly, "I'm flattered."

He tried to stand, but dropped to his knee, "Aw, shitshitshit _fug_! I can't get up."

"You did a decent enough job trying to strangle me." Squall told him, getting to his own feet.

"Oh, that's easy. I've been practicing for years." he pushed himself up, grabbing quickly onto the end of the table to steady himself, "Feels like they broke every bone in me, but the bones didn't get the message."

"One way to put it." Squall started looking around the room, trying to find other doors, cupboards, even a vent they might be able to use as an exit.

"What the hell do you think they did to us?" Seifer asked.

"Probably nothing very nice."

"I'm _serious_! I feel...dirty."

"Dirty?"

"Transgressed!" Seifer tried, as if he were rummaging through some mental thesaurus, "And...and violated."

Squall paused over the drawer he was looking through, closing it with a sigh as he turned back to Seifer, "Violated?"

"Fine, laugh at me if you want. I'd probably yuck it up at you if it was the other way around."

"Well yuck all you want," Squall indicated his own _X_ , "'Cause we're in the same boat."

Seifer sighed, "Yeah. Guess we are."

Squall began to return to his searching, but something stopped him, "Do you...do you _really_ think I'd laugh at you for being... _probed_ by black market surgeons?"

"Aw, lay off it, Leon..."

"No, I'm serious."

"It's no secret you want me dead, Leon. Can we cut the Kumbaya shit for a second?"

"Yeah, fine, I'm not gonna lie. I really don't like you. But I'm not gonna...laugh at you because you're feeling vulnerable."

"'Cause you're just a standup guy, right?"

Squall slammed the drawer shut, going back to the table to look into Seifer's face, "Because I'm an adult. And I don't take joy in your suffering. That's not how I operate."

"Yeah, well...believe it or not," Seifer crossed his arms, wincing as he did so, "It's not how I operate, neither."

Squall was quiet for some time, thinking that over, before he nodded, "Fine. So now that that's settled, maybe you can give me a hand and we can...get out of here before the transgressors and the violators and all the rest of them come..." he stopped, putting a hand slowly, shakily, to his heart.

"Leon?"

Squall opened his mouth to answer, but his tongue suddenly seemed to weigh a ton. His throat itched, his head throbbed, his heart seemed to have stopped in his chest.

"Leon, man, are you..."

Like a dam bursting, pain exploded through Squall's body, beginning in his center and spreading out everywhere. A burning, constant, pain. His heart went from being frozen in place to beating like a runaway engine.

He let out a cry, lurching forward toward the floor, and was stopped from actually meeting the cold concrete by Seifer's arms on his shoulders.

"Leon! Leon, what the hell..."

Every cell in Squall's body was burning up. He felt a wave of sweat on his brow, first cold, then hot, then cold again. The room began to blur around him, to fade, to change...

" _You can do better than that, can't you?_ " Rinoa's smile replaced Seifer's scowl, " _And here I thought I was being sent the best of the best_."

" _You have been_ ," his own voice, younger, cockier, and considerably stupider.

" _That so?_ " she grinned, " _Let's make that another three laps, then, before I decide I've been cheated_."

"Leon! Leon!" Seifer's calls cut into the scene, sounding as distant as if he were yelling from miles away, "C'mon, you're not checking out on me now..."

"I wouldn't worry about that," drawled a slow, easy voice, clear and decisive enough that it cut through whatever remained of the hazy illusion around Squall, bringing him back to this dark, grimy, painfully real reality.

"You won't be checking out on each other at all for some considerable time," Luxord stood in the doorway, dressed in one of his seemingly inexhaustible impeccably tailored suits, hands folded neatly in front of him, "For better or for worse."

" _You_?" Seifer demanded.

"And here I was, thinking you'd at least have had the foresight to learn my name before taking everything we've given you and tossing it to the winds. For shame, Mr. Almasy."

Squall looked up, still breathing heavily, even as the pain began, very slowly, to abate, "What did you to me?"

Seifer looked askance at him, though Luxord smiled, as if satisfied, "You catch on quickly, Detective. It's true then what they say. As much as things change, so they stay the same."

"Wait..." said Seifer, "I don't get it. _What_ did he do to you?"

"Oh, a relatively simple application," Luxord unfolded his hands to reveal a tiny silver ornament on a chain: a pocket watch, with dual knobs. Delicately fingering the right knob, he asked, "I could...perhaps demonstrate on you, Mr. Alma..."

"No!" Squall interrupted him, "Don't."

Luxord raised his eyebrows, "How gallant. You've only been stuck together for a few hours and you're already closer than ever."

Wide-eyed, Seifer looked from Squall to Luxord, "That watch...what is it, some kinda kill switch?"

"'Kill' is a bit too final of a designation," Luxord dangled the watch from the top of its chain, "This little invention of mine can do a great deal more than that." he wound the chain around his fingers, swinging the watch in quick circles, like a yo-yo, "But time enough for me to boast later. Follow me. Quickly."

He turned on his heel and started out into the next room and through the newly opened door.

"Clock's ticking, I guess," said Seifer begrudgingly. Squall shook his head at him, following.

"What did he do to you?" Seifer asked, sotto voice, as they followed Luxord out into a narrow, barely lit passageway, "Looked like you were having a heart attack or some shit."

"I think I was." Squall replied, "Watch must be connected to a pacemaker, or something."

"Pacemaker? You mean, like, what they give old ladies so they don't forget to breathe?"

"Something like that. But with a hell of a bigger kick."

"And..." Seifer indicated his own _X_ , "I got one too?"

"Seems that way."

Seifer gritted his teeth, balling his fists together, "They could've at least given me my jacket back."

They started up a set of narrow, grimy stairs, opening out in what appeared to be a very disused hotel lobby, complete with reception desk and boarded up fireplace.

Squall noted the coat of arms on the wall, the red and yellow feathers, crossed over each other.

"The Captain?" he asked, not expecting Luxord to answer, but getting an answer anyway.

"He's been anxious to speak to the both of you. You especially, Detective."

Squall had a dim recollection of a frenetic, confused sword fight in the ruins of the fighting pit. People screaming all around them, the stink of smoke in the air, a motorcycle ringing the edge of the stands, somehow the least chaotic thing about the whole scene.

"He's not dead?" he asked, as they moved beyond the desk and started up another staircase, this one carpeted.

"Despite your best efforts. Our Captain's been hanging on to life long enough, I suppose he felt it churlish to just give up now."

Seifer looked over at Squall, "What, you thought he was dead?"

"Hoped. We were fighting."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

Seifer let out a long, low whistle, as if actually impressed. Squall decided not to dignify that with a comment.

They reached a door on top of the stairs. Luxord barely had time to reach out to knock when it opened, revealing a petite blond in an impossibly low cut green slip.

"Heard us coming, didn't you?" Luxord smiled coolly, looking back at Squall and Seifer, "Tink is something of a marvel. Can't speak a word, but I'll be damned if her ears aren't keen as a bat's."

Tink regarded Luxord flatly. Her eyes, green as her dress, were cold and impassive. Her face might as well have been carved of stone, if it weren't for the surprising fire in her eyes.

"Captain," Luxord began, leading them past Tink into the smoky, yet neatly appointed wood-paneled study, so far the warmest place Squall had yet seen in the Underworld.

"Close the door, Luxord," came the too-familiar, unctuous voice from behind the desk.

Something almost resembling a smile flickered across Tink's face as Luxord went to close the door behind them. It was covered over with bookcases, no different from every other inch of wall in this room. The effect was painfully clear.

"Ah, the Prodigal Sons at last," the Captain slouched in a wingback armchair, the hook on his right wrist moving in close, deliberate circles over the much-scarred polished mahogany of the desktop, "Come closer. You've demonstrated enough fearlessness of late, let's not trade that in for cowardice now, yes?"

Seifer scowled, but moved forward, Squall at his side. The Captain had eyes only for the twin _X_ 's on each of their bare chests.

"I'm the first to admit," observed the Captain, "to a certain exasperation for our Mr. Smee, but he possesses at least _one_ talent."

"Smee?" asked Squall.

"You won't find his name in any medical journals, but he's as accomplished a surgeon as you'll find anywhere up top. He got to the two of you and you lived to tell the tale, didn't you?"

"Listen, Captain Shit for Brains," Seifer, in perfect form, leaned over the desk, "What the hell did you do to us and why the hell did you... _argh_!"

He collapsed against the desk, body shaking wildly, skin reddening in the blink of an eye.

"Dammit," Squall swore, bending down to grab Seifer by the shoulders, to hold his wildly thrashing body steady, "Stop it! He's no use to you dead."

Luxord smiled, taking his finger off the right knob of his watch, "Clever lad. And so touching how you stand up for him. I'm moved almost to tears."

Seifer stilled, breathing heavily, eyes wide and fixed, as though stunned, above him, "Fucking _coward_! Wanna try coming for me without your joy buzzer?"

"Seifer," Squall warned him, helping him back up.

"Lord have mercy," the Captain said dryly, "The way the two of you are crawling over each other, I'm half tempted to send you off to the Grotto. Ursula's been in dire need of new talent."

"What do you want with us?" asked Squall, "Don't say ransom, I think we both know Hades better than that."

The Captain chuckled, "You'd be surprised. Between you and I, Detective, Hades's vision has been narrowing precipitously for years..." he hesitated, looking past Luxord, who was standing beside Tink, his smile looking particularly fixed.

"But be that as it may, you're here for a higher purpose than that," he lifted his hook from the desk with surprisingly little effort, and examined it in a practiced air of indifference, "Given the... _mess_ you and your boy companions made of the Coliseum..."

"Sora and Riku?" asked Squall, "They made it out?"

The Captain didn't say anything at once, but Seifer let out a little laugh of affirmation, "'Course they did. Riku's one of my own, he knows what he's doing."

Squall considered adding that he clearly knew better than to let himself be abducted by Seifer, but he figured voicing that would only add more fuel to the Captain's fire.

"The whereabouts of my would-be newest fighter and Hades's would-be newest bank deposit are none of your concern."

"They got out," Seifer told Squall assuredly, "Riku don't look it, but he's got fight in him." he hesitated, looking back at Luxord, "You try and push the button, chief, I'll see you in hell."

"Wasn't considering it," said Luxord, not very convincingly.

"Those boys weren't the only ones to slip out during the chaos at the Coliseum," the Captain considered, a note of unease, of malice, beginning to creep into his voice.

"That's what this is?" asked Squall, "You're worried someone's gonna talk? Listen, if you think there's anything I can do about that, killswitch or no..."

"It isn't a kill switch," added Luxord, ignored.

"The fall of the Coliseum impacts us all," the Captain didn't take his eyes off Squall, "I will not begin to explain to you the efforts I went through to reopen it after your heroic purge."

"You'd have been better off digging a hole to China. Coliseum got shut down once, why bother trying it again?"

The Captain rose from the desk so quickly Squall at first thought he'd fall over, but he caught himself before long, looking at Squall from under a mane of greasy hair, "The Coliseum was always more than a fighting pit..."

"A bit late to get me sold on the sales' pitch, isn't it?"

"The Coliseum is the crucible that transforms boys into men, thugs into soldiers..."

"That's a load of bull!" Seifer interrupted him with surprising vehemence, "Place was a death camp, so you and your sick fuck friends could pretend you were living some fancy life watching the riffraff rip each other to shreds."

"You are awfully critical of our lifestyle here, Mr. Almasy, for one who so readily profits from our enterprise."

Seifer held off, looking away. Squall remembered his insistence, earlier, that whatever he may have done to Kairi and the other girls, Hades had never gotten any of them from him. Though whether that was said to absolve himself, to defend Hades, or just admit through omission to a whole other series of mistakes, Squall couldn't be sure, and this wasn't the time to wonder why.

"Regardless, it has fallen, and Hades is otherwise preoccupied to be concerning himself with the fallout."

"Please tell me I blew him up," said Seifer, "I was aiming for him, after..."

"Hold your tongue!" the Captain snapped, leaning across the desk. Seifer, to his credit, stood his ground, looking over his shoulder to Luxord, "If you're gonna zap me, now's as good a time as any."

Luxord didn't zap anybody, but kept the watch held neatly in one hand as he moved from Tink's side to get behind the Captain's desk, "Whatever stake we may have put on the Coliseum in the past," he gave the Captain a none-too-subtle icy look, "Hades has been forced to deal with more pressing cares."

Squall looked from the Captain's glower to Luxord's frigidly set lips, and felt a smile spread across his face, "It's out, isn't it? The Coliseum. Word's gotten out, and now he's doing damage control."

"In a manner of speaking," Luxord spoke matter-of-factly, looking at none of them in particular, "The...explosion at the Coliseum did raise some alarms..."

"Hell yeah, it did," Seifer grinned.

"...but has been neatly explained away as a collapse at one of Hades's legitimate coal refineries."

Seifer's smile fell, as Squall rolled his eyes, "No one's gonna believe that."

"You've been at this for some time, Detective. You know good and well that belief doesn't matter here."

And Squall knew he was right. Much as Ratcliff might talk about getting the Styx and Stones out of town, wiping the stain of their legacy off Radiant County forever, there was too much risk tied up poking their noses in where they didn't belong. And Hades knew how to maintain a cover, how to get every little question, every tiniest curiosity, bound up in red tape.

"Hades's concern lies in a different quarter," Luxord turned the watch over in his hands, "Sora and Riku aren't the only birds that have flown."

"Real tight ship you're running," Seifer observed, "And you wonder why I talk shit..."

"Perhaps you recall our run-in in the waterway," Luxord interrupted him.

"Nice way to call a sewer," said Squall, but he figured he understood what Luxord was getting at, "The dead girl."

"Ariel," Seifer looked from Squall to Luxord, blanching. His hand began to move up to his chest, stopping just short of his scar. But Squall got the idea.

"Not a mere coincidence. Our Mr. Smee and the one who marked the Beautiful Soul come from a similar line of training."

The Captain muttered something under his breath, in evident disapproval, but Luxord disregarded him.

"You were keeping someone in that...room," Squall continued, "With all the writing."

Luxord reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, producing a long, thin black feather, of the kind Squall and Seifer had found in the corner of that frigid, dank cell.

"Astute," he set the feather down on the desk, "It would appear that someone has set him loose. Alarms were sounded, to no avail."

"Not Ariel," continued Seifer, "Sure, she wasn't too bright..." Squall gave him a look and he changed tacks, "...she knew how to take care of herself."

"The girl was too likely in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's one runaway stopped in her tracks, at least."

"What is he? One of your gladiators gone wrong?"

"Hardly," the Captain chimed in, "A gladiator fights, and fights well. This one can't do anything but kill."

"An assassin?" Squall crossed his arms, "M.O's a bit more obvious than Hades likes."

"What's the point of all this?" asked Seifer, "I sure as dirt didn't let your pet psycho out, and neither did Leon. I was babysitting him all day."

"You're not under suspicion," said Luxord smoothly, "There's the matter of the other bird."

Squall considered it, "Someone else's been killed?"

Luxord smiled thinly, "Sharp. Not the other bird, but it it's true the Beautiful Soul's murder wasn't the only one in the Underworld yesterday."

"And here I was thinking what a great neighborhood this was..."

Luxord moved his finger toward the knob and Seifer stopped, rolling his eyes.

Luxord next went back to his blazer pocket, this time producing a wallet sized photograph, which he set down on the desk, pushing it over to him.

"Holy shit..." breathed Seifer, looking over Squall's shoulder at the grisly image, the body sprawled out over the bed, almost every inch red with blood from a single wound.

"Rashid Jafar," Luxord explained, "An attorney, more specifically..."

"Riku's legal counsel," Squall finished for him, "What the hell was he doing here?"

"Looking for Riku, of course. You found him first, though and now..." Luxord shrugged, "It would appear he's lost to all of us."

"So...what?" prompted Seifer, "You think your Black Bird got to this guy?"

"Can't be," said Squall, "If he's as loud about killing as you say he is. Carving that _X_ into her back..." he shook his head, "this looks professional."

"And yet it isn't without a calling card of its own," Luxord pointing at something in the picture, almost lost against the torrent of blood over the dead lawyer's front. A speck of yellow, starkly bright against the darkness of the rest of the image

Seifer made a noise of confusion, but Squall wasn't paying him any mind. Everything else may as well have stopped happening around him. Even the picture, the crime scene, wasn't as important as that little yellow ornament in the dead man's jacket.

A canary yellow feather, just as bold, as boastful as the one lying over Rinoa's body, the brightest color in that cold, dismal morgue.

" _What is it?_ " someone had asked, maybe one of the forensics guys, Squall had forgotten so many details of that day, " _Jewelry?_ "

" _No,_ " Squall had just known, the moment he saw it, " _It's a trophy._ She's _a trophy_."

"Something familiar?" the Captain's interest appeared to have been revived. He was grinning a slimy grin, as if he'd staged the picture himself, just to get under Squall's skin.

Squall lunged for him, not even thinking, grabbing him by the gaudy lapels of his silk shirt, slamming him against the door.

"Leon, watch out!" Seifer cried, but Squall wasn't paying any attention.

"You said he was dead!" Squall's voice was deep, gravely, he barely recognized it as his own, "Killed, that's what you told us! You _swore_ it!"

"So I did," the Captain breathed, "And I wasn't lying."

With his hook, he reached forward, seizing the metal lion from around Squall's neck, pulling the medallion closer to him.

"Some things in life kill the men we were, and let us be born anew."

There was a cry, a muffled crash from behind him, but before Squall could turn to see what was going on, he felt his body rocked by pain again, his heart screaming in protest, forcing him to his knees.

As his vision struggled to refocus, he heard the Captain speaking above him, "Nothing changes a man faster than killing. And Strife is nothing if not a killer. A good one."

Squall opened his eyes, looking clearly at the Captain's legs... No. At his _leg_.

"Admiring your handiwork?" the Captain glowered down at him as if from miles away, Rinoa's lion charm dangling from his hook where it had snapped clear of Squall's neck, "You might have been a killer too, if only you had the stomach for it."

He lifted the grotesque metal and leather talon that had been his left leg, the birdlike, clawed foot connected with Squall's jaw, sending him rolling onto his chest, near Seifer, who was slumped against one of the bookcases, bleeding from some cut in his mouth.

"Tried to get the watch from him," he offered by way of an explanation, "Didn't work."

Squall looked at him, "Thanks," and he found he meant it.

"You may yet have your chance," Luxord continued, his red knuckles the only indication he'd moved an inch from where Squall had seen him last, "To be a killer."

He sank into the Captain's chair, toying with the watch in his hands, "Jafar's body was discovered yesterday afternoon, at around the same time our Black Bird, as you call him, was discovered to have been loosed from his cage. The placement of Cloud Strife's Coliseum calling card at the scene of the murder would appear to indicate..."

"You lost him." Squall forced himself to his feet, lumbering however unsteadily over to the desk, "You kept him safe all these years, you rebuilt your goddamn arena, you watched as he killed more and more people for your _amusement_ but now that he's turned on you, you've had enough. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?"

"Please don't," Luxord smiled, "I detest pity."

He took another feather from his pocket, the yellow one, setting it down next to the black on the desk.

"Two birds, both flown at the same time, both hardened killers. It's not likely they're working together."

Squall stared, waiting for an explanation, but apparently he didn't merit one. Luxord continued, "Jafar was of a considerably higher profile than most of the Underworld's clientele. What's more, he represented a known business rival of Hades's. Legitimate and non. Him being killed at Elysian Fields, his body marked with the symbol of Hades's favorite enforcer... "

"You think he's turned on you. Got sick of being a lapdog."

"It would appear that way," Luxord continued, "Clearly, whatever Strife's motive, his killing Jafar is a deliberate attack on Hades's good standing. This isn't a death that can be easily swept under the rug, certainly not now that certain...less than satisfied Coliseum patrons are beginning to turn their whispers into murmurs."

"Too many scared and injured audience members," Squall observed, "They don't take as kindly when it's them getting bloodied."

"The hell do you want us to do, then?" asked Seifer, "Sounds like you chickenshits are at the end of your rope."

"The Coliseum falling has stirred up a great deal of unrest, yes. Hades has had to focus more than he would like on his...public persona..."

"While you play damage control." Squall finished.

Luxord shrugged, "The Styx and Stones cannot be seen to operate in any overt capacity for some time in the future. However, the matter of the two birds being such as it is..."

"You want us to catch them?" asked Seifer, "Fat flipping chance."

"Admirable as your priggish stubbornness may be, Almasy," said the Captain, "You don't have a choice here."

Seifer looked down at his chest and promptly spat on the floor, in what seemed a noble attempt at accepting defeat without conceding the argument.

"I'm sure I don't need to remind you two of the Lord of the Dead's mercy," said Luxord, though Squall got the impression he was speaking more to Seifer than to him, "You could have just as easily been killed at once without a second thought..."

"But you need us," said Seifer, "Ain't nothing mercylike about it, so cut the shit."

"Consider it cut," Luxord held the watch up from its chain, holding it before them, "You've already been introduced to the baser functions of this trinket of mine. But it's can do more than give you a shock at will."

"It tells time?" asked Seifer dryly.

"As a matter of fact, it does. In a manner of speaking," Luxord indicated the clock face, the neat Roman numerals around the edge.

"One through thirteen?" asked Squall.

"It's a stopwatch. You'll forgive me, I hope, for spinning this predicament of ours into a game, but I think competition throws in an extra impetus to succeed. We are, after all, only human."

"What does it count down? Thirteen hours?"

"Thirteen sins," Luxord got up and began to walk slowly, deliberate around the office, "Infractions, mistakes, betrayals. I would say we have no time to find our flown birds, but that expression isn't quite appropriate. There is always time, we just rarely make good use of it. If either of these missing killers step into the public eye, this organization will never recover. They must be found, and they must be silenced."

"Or you flip that switch?" prompted Seifer.

Luxord shook his head, "I know neither of you can possibly be considered willing agents in this task. Hence, the thirteen sins. Any attempt to renege on this arrangement, to expose your purpose, to reveal to anybody what you are after and why..." he stroked the clock face, "That's one sin."

Squall could feel Seifer's eyes on him, but he resisted the impulse to meet them, "And at 13 o'clock?"

Luxord snapped the cover over the watch, "Time's up. For both of you." he spun the chain around once, twice, "Any questions?"

"You're fucking insane," Seifer spat, "If this is the only thing you can think of to catch these two goons, you deserve to be found out. I've been saying for years, Styx and Stones've lost their touch."

"Perhaps we have," said Luxord, "No better time to find it again." he slipped the watch beneath his jacket, "I hope you two understand the gravity of the situation. Your fate is, quite literally, in the palm of my hand."

Seifer bit his lip, looking like it was taking every impulse in him not to have another go at Luxord, whatever the cost.

Anticipating this, Squall put a hand on his arm, giving him a look. There was anger in Seifer's eyes but also, beneath that, a note of fear.

"I should think you'd both be more excited," Luxord chuckled lightly, "All these years, and at last an opportunity falls into your laps to avenge your mutual Lost Lenore."

"Lost..." Seifer looked from Luxord back to Squall, a slow but terrible expression coming over his face, " _Rinoa_?"

And this time, Squall found he didn't mind him saying her name. Just hearing it come out of someone else's mouth seemed to ground him, remind him that she was real, in all her bold, abrasive, wild beauty. She'd lived and she'd died, and Squall had never known anything of her killer except for a name, a silly stage name, and a feather.

He wondered how much Seifer knew, if he'd really been content working for the Styx and Stones all this time, doing their dirty work, and somehow never knowing the name of the man who'd killed Rinoa, the woman who had gone back to this place to save him.

Or maybe he did know, maybe he'd even met him. And maybe he was just lying now, lying like everyone else in the Underworld.

"Such a pretty name," the Captain interjected, still eyeing the lion charm on his hook, "For a pretty girl. She fought nobly, that much is true. But Strife, young and bullheaded as he was...he fought harder..."

"We'll do it," Squall cut him off, stepping forward with such suddenness that the Captain looked taken aback, "We'll find the both of them."

"Excellent," Luxord nodded, "Now, so you understand, one bird..." he picked up the black feather, "...he must be brought back alive. Wings clipped, perhaps. But alive. The other on the other hand..."

He reached for the yellow feather, but Squall beat him to it, picking it up in one hand, "I understand."

"Leon, wait," he heard Seifer whispering at his shoulder, a hoarse, rapid insistence, "this is crazy! There's gotta be some other..."

Luxord smirked, "You catch on quickly. I thought you might." he looked both Squall and Seifer up and down, "You'll be needing some fresh clothes. And some other things besides."

He nodded to Tink, who seemed to have materialized as if from nowhere, lost in the chaos of everything else that had happened in here. She nodded, looking disaffected as ever, and slipped through the bookcase, though whether it was the same one they came in by or another one entirely, he was unsure.

Seifer was still looking at Squall like a betrayed kid, but Squall found he could look at nothing else but the Captain in the corner, and the silver Lionheart on his hook.

Her voice again, clear as if she were in the room with him, " _Not a lot of people believe in heroes anymore. All the more reason to prove them wrong._ "

* * *

You know how, in dreams, things that take a minute in real life play out like a PBS melodrama, and things that take hours happen in seconds?

Well that was kinda what falling from a three story rooftop felt like. Axel knew he was falling, the kid he'd rescued (?) holding tightly to his hand, plummeting to certain death or possibly severely debilitating injury.

But it all seemed to happen so slowly. As if time itself had decided to play with its food, now that it had gotten Axel where it wanted him.

 _Maybe you're supposed to contemplate your existance_ , he wondered at some point, _Let your life flash before your eyes, all that other jazz._

But, try as he might, no mental highlight reel manifested.

Maybe he _wasn't_ going to die.

And the next thing he new, he was lying in a pile of moldering garbage, staring up at the clear night sky, alight with stars, feeling sore as a senior, but alive.

"What..." he began to say, before realizing his mouth was full of muddy, soggy yard filth that, hopefully, was organic only in the agricultural sense of the word. Coughing this mess out of his lungs as best as he could, he turned to face his companion.

"What the hell just happened?"

The kid looked at him, that little smile he'd seemed to be wearing as they fell, gone now, replaced by the same inscrutable mask he'd had on since their fateful meeting not too long ago.

"You know what, good idea," Axel nodded, "Questions are overrated."

He sat up and, feeling his whole body seize up in protest, more or less fell from the dumpster to the parking lot outside.

"Can you move?" he asked, looking back inside at his companion.

The kid sat up, letting out a little grunt as he did so, but he managed to swing his way out of the dumpster all the same. Axel put a hand on his shoulder to steady him, observing as he did so that, whatever state his clothes were in was nothing to the flimsy medical gown he had on.

Poor guy, but then again, it wasn't like they had a lot of options where wardrobe was concerned at the moment.

He looked back up to the Mansion roof and thought he could dimly make out their favorite mad scientist looking down at them, probably wailing like the little bitch he was.

"Fuck you, too!" Axel called back, giving him the finger before turning to the kid, "Come on, we'd better go."

He thought at once of Marluxia's car, still at the other end of the courtyard where Larxene had parked it. Trouble was, he had neither the keys nor Larxene. Searching frantically for an alternate plan of action, Axel took hold of the kid's arm and ran for the treeline behind the house.

The woods at the edge of Twilight were a thick, mostly untouched mass of wilderness. Axel remembered a few childhood adventures in this dark, stinking, yet weirdly magical place. He, Larxene, a few neighborhood kids whose names he could barely remember, let alone their faces, climbing trees, playing pretend, all that epicurean kid stuff you were _supposed_ to do at that age.

Axel had gotten tired of it pretty fast. The road was _right_ there, after all. All he needed was a bike to conquer it. The woods were...

Different. Wilder, untrammeled, impossible to tame.

"If we're lucky, we'll lose 'em here," he panted, ducking under some low branches, leading the kid down a short decline in the forest floor, "Sure one or two of those guys could probably kill us both with a handshake, but who needs brawn when you've got brains, huh?"

The kid made a little noise that may have been an agreement. Axel wondered again how much he could understand him.

:"Listen..." he began, "thanks for...for the whole 'jumping off the roof' thing. Yeah, it was _totally_ insane, but it worked. Didn't think it would, so... Kudos."

The boy made another noise.

Axel slowed down, unable to hide a creeping concern that was, bit by bit, beginning to overtake him.

"So...I know you can speak. I mean, you have. I don't know if you noticed, but...you've done it once, twice."

"...speak?" at least, it sounded like a question.

"Make that three times. So...do you got a name? 'Cause I can't keep calling you Sleeping Beauty. It's a lot to explain, yanno, and people will start asking questions..."

"A...name?"

"Yeah, a name. Like...I'm Axel," he pointed to himself, "Ax-el. Got it memorized?"

"Axel," he repeated it with a nod, "Axel."

"That's it! So much for hooked on phonics, yeah?"

"Axel." he said it again, smiling as if he'd just discovered the secret to mortal happiness, "Axel!"

"Okay, take it easy, kid. We don't want to bring any of the boys in white coats down on us." he clambered over a stand of rocks, reaching out a hand so the kid could take it.

The boy looked at the hand again, as if he wasn't sure what to do with it. Sighing, Axel reached forward and took the hand, helping him up and over.

"So...what about you?" he tried again, "You got a name?"

"A name." he looked up at the sky, brow furrowed in what appeared to be intense concentration.

"A name..."

"I mean, it's cool if you don't. For all I now you're one of those test tube people the tin foil hat crew goes on about, and this is the first time you've ever been outside..."

"...ra." he said again, "Ra...ra..." it seemed to be giving him trouble. He kept pausing, saying it again, working himself up.

"Hey, hey, don't hurt yourself, brother." Axel told him, patting him gently on the shoulder, "Ra's all you got, that's cool. We'll work with it. Ra..."

He looked back at the stand of rocks they'd just cleared, "Rocks. We're not calling you Rocky, only assholes are called Rocky."

"Ass?" another question.

"I'll tell you when you're older," Axel rolled his eyes, but stopped to think, "Hm. There's something. Rocks and ass," he turned to him, making a pair of finger guns as he did so, "Roxas! Dig it?"

He was quiet for a while, but when he next spoke, his face lit up again, "Roxas. A name. Roxas."

"A name. Yours, if you want it."

"Yours if you want it."

"No, not mine... _yours_."

"Not mine."

"No, it is yours! I mean, it's mine."

"Mine. Roxas."

"You're getting it."

He nodded, "I am."

"Figured out that one pretty fast, didn't you?" Axel nodded in approval, "Give it a coupla hours, maybe we can have a nice honest chitchat."

They went on in quiet for a bit longer, Axel thinking to himself about _X_ -Corp, about Larxene, Demyx, all of them.

He couldn't just leave them there, especially not Dem. If something had happened to him, if he was anything like Roxas...

"Ugh!" a short gasp, and a thud. Axel whirled around, to find Roxas slumped against a nearby tree, holding a hand to his head.

Headaches again. Jesus.

"Whoa," he cautioned, moving closer to him, "you okay?"

Roxas was quiet at first, eyes pressed shut. Axel could see a vein working furiously in his forehead, his skin splotched red in some places, a sheen of sweat beading up on his pale, grimy brow.

"O..." he began, "Okay."

Axel wasn't sure if he meant that as an answer, or if he was just better at mimicry than Zazu could ever hope to be.

He put a hand on Roxas's shoulder, his fingers brushing against the tangle of his blond hair, in doing so coming up against something rough and uneven on the back of his neck.

"What the..." he began, brushing the hair aside to see a scar on the skin. And not just any scar. An _X_ , light brown, almost faded, but not entirely.

"Talk about protecting the brand," he observed darkly, "What are you, some kind of guinea pig. What am I saying, of course you are."

Roxas looked up, still bleary-eyed, but with a renewed steadiness, past Axel, to the sky.

"Moon," he said, "The moon."

"What?" he followed his gaze, "Uh...yeah. The moon. It's...um...it's nice, isn't it? Waxing gibbous." he grinned, trying not to look too proud of himself for knowing that.

"Waxing?"

"Yeah I know, it makes no sense. It means...uh...it's getting bigger. Every night, the moon gets a little bigger in the sky until, finally, it's full again. Whole."

"Whole."

"The whole enchilada, yep."

"Full moon," Roxas nodded, "Huh."

He seemed to be thinking about something, but Axel wasn't sure what. At least he _was_ thinking, that must be progress of _some_ kind.

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why?"

"Oh...well, um...something about space, and the sun, and stuff. I dunno my friend told me about it."

"Friend."

"Yeah, Moonboy. He'd probably like you, you both like to ask questions."

"Friend?" it was a question now.

Axel sighed, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, "I'll...um...I'll explain. Later." he cleared his throat, "We'd better keep going. There's a lot...a lot to work out."

"Keep going," Roxas agreed, "Okay. Axel."

He started off into the woods, apparently not at all bothered by the roughness of the forest floor under his bare feet, or of the cold night air under his neat little hospital dress.

"Yep," said Axel, "Roxas."

And he followed, furiously thinking of what the hell he was going to do now.

* * *

Larxene had been staring at the closed door for what felt like ages. When the sirens stopped, she figured it couldn't be much longer now until someone came in to check on her. They couldn't possibly mean to just keep her here forever. They had a perfectly nifty set of subzero prison cells several floors below for that.

"You can't keep me locked up here forever!" she called out at one point, hurling a glass paperweight engraved to ' _Southwest Neurology Honors_ ' at the door, where it landed sadly on the mockingly plush carpet.

"It's not even real glass!" she cried out in as loud a voice, looking around at the office for something else she could try to break.

Sure, not at all helpful, but Larxene was getting fed up with being locked away like an afterthought. And now, now that she'd seen Demyx...

She couldn't get it out of her head. Her brother, huddled up against the wall, pale and cold, just repeating those goddamn lyrics over and over and over again, as if he'd forgotten what they meant, but couldn't keep himself from saying them anyway.

Like he'd die if he stopped. Hell, maybe he would.

But she couldn't fix on that now. Nothing good would come of it. Or so she'd been telling herself. Yet here she was now, and a better solution hadn't yet presented itself.

Larxene picked up a framed photo from the desk. It wasn't even a photo, just one of those stock prints of a bird that probably came with the frame at the local drug store.

"Beautiful family, you've got!" she shouted out next, waiting for a response and not getting one, "How many kids?"

She set the picture down with a clang, crossing her arms. Unlike Luxia's office, this one didn't even have a window, despite being located on the top floor. Clearly, the head scientist was as cold and reptilian as Luxia had always made him out to be.

"I can do this all day!" she began, but was cut off by the noise of the door unlatching.

"Kindly save your energy," Vexen groused, stepping into the office, bleary-eyed and disheveled. He looked askance at the plaque lying on the floor, eyes widening, "How dare..."

Larxene took advantage of this moment of stupefaction to sock him in the face, sending Vexen reeling against the newly closed door.

"That's for locking me up. You don't wanna know what you're getting for my brother."

Vexen stared at her, rubbing his cheek with an almost funny pout on his face, "Your street urchin theatrics are charming, but you can put them aside for now."

"Theatrics?" Larxene asked, "What do you call this parade of locking me up in increasingly sterile offices?"

"You're a particular inconvenience, Larxene," he brushed off his coat, blowing a loose strand of hair out of his face in irritation, "Like a Christmas gift no one particularly wanted, but can't be returned in good taste."

"That's funny," Larxene nodded, "Given I was under the impression you _did_ really want me, until Marluxia sold Demyx to you like a dog."

"There's one word to describe him," Vexen tittered, "A yappy, hyper little furball who can't keep from wetting every other inch of floor..."

"He forgets his potty training under stress, he's very sensitive like that."

"Ha ha," perhaps the most dolorous 'ha ha' Larxene had ever heard, but it's what he said all the same, "But you _do_ both possess a certain manic energy, there's one thing you have in common..."

"What did you do to him?" Larxene moved forward again, flexing sore fingers in case the need arose to give Vexen a more memorable mark of this encounter (she still knew how to throw a punch, that was becoming clearer and clearer today, among many other things), "The...the chanting, that song, why is he doing that?"

Vexen frowned, "Zexion should have restrained himself. Upstart boy, he'll be the ruin of us all, I keep saying that."

"You put him in time out too? Or is he getting a room next door to Dem's, where he can warble Manilow to nobody for the rest of his life?"

"Please," he rolled his eyes, moving closer to his desk, hobbling a bit on what appeared to be a gimp leg, "I'm not some back alley surgeon, cutting people into itty bitty tenders just to tickle my jollies..."

"There's a phrase."

"Your brother is fine," he didn't sound entirely thrilled about the prospect, "Just a bit of...early onset trauma."

"You see, none of that sounds fine," Larxene moved around the back of the desk, standing over Vexen in his chair, looking down at him in challenge, "I need you to fix him."

"Oh well, _fix_ him..." Vexen smirked, a surprisingly slimy smirk, "...reproductive medicine was never my area of expertise, but I suppose I could charge a flat rate..."

Larxene punched him again, the force nearly tipping him over in his chair with a ridiculous yelp.

"You impertinent little _bitch_!" he squealed.

"You too," Larxene told him brusquely, "Jesus, I'm starting to get why Luxia hates you so much."

" _Luxia_..." Vexen rolled his eyes, "I do hope you're not still soft on him. If it weren't for his pernicious meddling we'd both be enjoying a fairly normal Monday evening..."

"Sorry for keeping you from Playgirl and Chardonnay, Doc. I'll be sure to yell at Luxia extra hard."

"Chardonnay," Vexen harrumphed, looking around the room aimlessly. Larxene noticed he had a bruise on his cheek where she'd hit him, turning rapidly from red to blue.

 _Won't Axel be impressed? Still a bit of the Earthshakers in you, after all_.

It occurred to her Vexen hadn't mentioned Axel yet. Maybe he hadn't caught him. Better yet, maybe Axel had gotten out. If he decided not to indulge his innate desire to run away from all his problems, he might just be able to get them all some help.

After all, he'd promised her nothing less, and Larxene hoped he'd at least learned a promise meant something by now.

"Here," Vexen opened a drawer, producing a stout bottle and a pair of glasses.

"You son of a bitch."

"Fine, then, stay thirsty," he poured half a measure of sparkling pink wine into his glass, "It's white Zinfandel. A present for completing my PhD."

"From who, yourself?"

The look Vexen gave her suggested she was right on the mark, and also that he hated her guts. Larxene didn't mind.

"Your boyfriend is a scurrilous little manipulator," he continued.

"That he is."

"He's the exact reason you don't join up with big business. Little boy born to privilege, thinks because he got into all the right schools, he can rule the whole shebang the second he gets his foot in the door." he looked Larxene up and down, "That's not you though, is it?"

"What's not me?"

"You're a child of the unfortunates, scion of the streets and byways," he took a hearty sip of his wine, smacking his lips in what appeared an uncharacteristic moment of zeal.

"Sure, I was playing stickball in the gutters and dodging chamber pot refuse by the time I was four, what the _hell_ is your point?"

"We can appreciate the value of hard work," Vexen nodded, "Hard as you may find it to believe, I come from small beginnings myself."

"I'm amazed."

He rolled his eyes, "You work long enough to achieve a goal, to find a place in the world, it naturally becomes irksome when some perfumed idiot with a ridiculous coif bounds on in and expects to be handed the very world you worked so hard to achieve on a silver platter."

"Luxia said he had a look in the company ledgers," Larxene prompted, not really keen on listening to Vexen's doleful sob story several swigs of wine in, "Discovered some creative arithmetic."

"Nothing creative about it," Vexen sniffed, "If I had my way, all the expenses for this project would've been kept entirely off the record, but no, it wasn't safe." another sip, "And here we are."

"Kidnapping people and locking them in meat freezers probably breaks an ethics rule or two."

"If science waited for society to catch up with it, we'd all have died of plague in mud huts a damnable long time ago."

"You gonna tell me what you guys were working on here, or are we just going to talk around it?"

Vexen sighed, "I suppose you're entitled, now that you've seen your brother. Never mind it was going to be you in his place..." he cleared his throat, "It's a project we've been working on for years. The Skeleton Key Initiative."

"Catchy. What's it for?"

Vexen smiled thinly, "I'm not _that_ fargone. Yet. The point is, your rosy dilettante discovered our off-the-books effort _in_ the books, and decided he would make himself a pretty penny off what he'd learned."

He set the glass down firmly, "No delusions now, _I_ had nothing to do with this. If he'd come to _me_ , I would've laughed in his face, told him where to stick his ledger."

"Real inspiring. You might've saved us all a lot of trouble."

"Of course, like the opportunist he was, he looked _past_ the artist who'd created the project, decided to take his information to the tippity top of the ladder..."

"The Superior?" Larxene cocked an eyebrow, realizing as she did that she'd sounded frighteningly like Luxia himself as she said it.

"And of course, our Man in Charge is concerned primarily with keeping this ship of ours afloat in a gale. Self preservation wins out over good sense every time."

"Luxia got his promotion."

"You know how long _I_ slaved away at this miserable place before _I_ got my board seat? You were in diapers."

"Didn't realize you were so young."

"You want to be funny, have a goddamn glass of wine," he pushed the bottle over to her. Larxene eyed it, but made no other motion toward it.

"But Marluxia was blackmailed. His silence..."

"If he surrendered you to us. For Skeleton Key research. Laughable, of course, but it's just the thing Xemnas would come up with."

He said the name easily, getting considerably redder in the face, "He likes you."

Larxene frowned, "He... _what?_ "

"You have that...face," Vexen gestured vaguely, "It appeals to his more baboonish nature."

"Which is why he wanted you to carve my brain open."

"Nothing so barbaric," but he sounded even more disingenuous than usual as he said it.

"Most bosses just cop a feel at the water cooler,"

"Yes, well we're an unconventional office environment, if nothing else." he laughed bitterly, "Ha."

"Ha."

"Hmph," another sip, he was getting near the bottom of the glass, "Well, rest assured, your Flowery Romeo loves you, if nothing else."

"So much so that he decided to throw my brother to you guys without even telling me about it. You know, he was totally on board with acting like Demyx was kidnapped by some nameless street thugs and then never mentioning it again?"

"What do you want me to say? I've well established, I think he's a tosspot. But yes, he negotiated for your brother in your place."

"And Xemnas didn't mind?"

Vexen shrugged, "He's had his mind in other quarters lately. The deeper intricacies of this project have been falling to me. Of course, not so much that I had any say in this, but..." he shrugged.

"So you took Demyx."

"Well, not _me_. Xaldin, I think, and Lexeaus."

"How many people are in on this?" she leaned forward, "I've been here all day, I've only seen three people. And then, five for Xaldin and Xemnas..."

"Like I said. Off the books project. Strictly need to know, until Corporate Crusader decided to stick his nose in." Vexen drained his glass, reaching for the bottle to pout out some more.

"And you can cut that nonsense."

"What nonsense?" asked Larxene.

Vexen looked at her over the rim of his glass, "We both know very well you've seen more than three people today."

"Fine. Four counting Demyx, which reminds me, what the hell are you doing to..."

"Five. Five people. Or have you forgotten your sprightly redheaded compatriot?"

Larxene tensed at once, but she could tell by the way Vexen was looking at her that no good would come of lying. He may be riding well past tipsy at this point, but he was at least cooperating with her.

"You've gotten him too, then?"

"Hardly," he sniffed again, "And therein lies the problem."

Larxene was quiet for some time as a slow, but remarkable feeling of relief began to sweep over her, "He got out."

"You can try not to look so giddy. What is he, one of your biker friends, back from your salad days?"

"Something like that."

"Axel," Vexen chuckled, "Silly name, but it does suit the type, I suppose."

"How do you know his name?"

"He was in the news a few nights back," he said it as if it should be obvious, "Something about liberating a..." he was quiet for some time, as if in contemplation, "...fellow biker thug from jail back in Destiny. I'm sure you know that."

"You really want to start comparing felonies?"

Vexen rolled his eyes, "The fact of the matter is, you brought him here, and now you're stuck with me and he's in the wind. And not alone."

"Demyx?" she whispered the name, as if to say it louder would make it untrue.

Apparently, she wasn't quiet enough. Vexen threw back his head and laughed, spilled wine all over his coat, but at this point he didn't seem to care.

"Oh, no, no, no...nothing that simple. No, you see...he made off with a particularly sensitive bit of company property. And _X_ -Corp is quite...vulnerable without it."

"That's how I felt too, first time Axel left. It passes."

"It's like _that_ is it?" he cocked an eyebrow, "Either way, you don't know what you're talking about."

"What? Some supplies? Drugs? Axel's attention span is only so long."

"A bigger deal than that, something we can't replace," he put the glass down, looking suddenly more grounded, and for that, more menacing, "The Skeleton Key."

"What...the project?"

"The project's namesake. The Skeleton Key. All our work is for naught without it. Your leather jacketed loverboy doesn't know what he's made off with."

"What is it?"

Vexen chuckled, reaching into his coat and producing a thin office folder, only slightly dampened by the wine. From this folder, he produced a picture, which he pressed into Larxene's hands.

"Oh my God," she looked up at him, "You can't be..."

"You really think your brother was the first? Come now, you've been following along neatly enough so far."

"I don't understand," her words seemed to clot up in her throat, her hand was shaking, "What are you _doing_ to them? What _is_ the Skeleton Key, what could you possibly..."

"None of your concern. All I need tell you is all of this will have been for nothing if that boy," he nodded to the picture in Larxene's hands, "is lost to us. And before you start celebrating, please remember that your brother's fate still rests squarely in my hands."

Larxene set down the picture, leaning back against the wall, "That's what this is? Just another gambit. I thought you hated that kind of manipulation."

"I do, I loathe it. But your Marluxia has necessitated we all do things we're not particularly proud of."

Larxene was quiet for a while, "Does he know?"

"Which he?"

"The Superior. Xemnas, does he know your experiment's escaped?"

Vexen took in breath and got to his feet, swaying precariously as he did, "Why don't you leave that to me? Your task is clear. Find this Axel of yours, and bring my Key back to me. Or the brother you knew will become a distant memory."

Larxene slapped him, sending him careening into the desk, sending his glass shattering to the floor, but not the bottle.

"You son of a bitch," she looked down at him, "how do I know you're telling the truth? That the Demyx I saw down there can be fixed? That you haven't..." she felt a sting of tears again, but repressed them, "...that you haven't broken him, already?"

Vexen rubbed his face where she'd hit him, glowering, "Trust is a magical thing. Drizzle some water on it, and it blooms."

"Fuck you."

"You should live so long," he leaned up against the desk, "And believe me, your brother can be fixed, certainly. Or I can reduce him to less than a baby, less than a dog, a fleshy vegetable with whatever remains of his soul fluttering somewhere behind his eyes like some moth trapped in the dark. Do not underestimate me, woman, not now, not today, not ever. I am through with games."

He stood, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, "Are we understood?"

Larxene stood there, regarding him with mixed hatred and disgust. The image of Demyx in that cell haunted her. His wide eyes, his expression of frozen shock, of fear, as if he'd never smiled, never sang, never yelled at that stupid bird to help him out with the chorus for once in its life.

"Go to hell," she told him.

"Is that an agreement?" asked Vexen.

"You want it in writing?"

"Hardly. Your boyfriend's demonstrated the chaos a paper trail leads to, in the end." he snapped his fingers and, in a minute, the door unlocked, revealing Lexeaus in the doorway.

"She's ready," Vexen told him without turning, "Get her out of here."

"My very own bodyguard," Larxene scowled at him, "I'm flattered."

She followed Lexeaus out of the office, first seizing the bottle of Zinfandel as she did so. Vexen either didn't notice, or was beyond caring.

"You know, I always thought you were pretty decent," she told Lexeaus as he led her down the same stairs he'd led her up what felt like ages ago, "Must be a shittier judge of character than I thought."

"If you think so," was his only reply.

"Can I ask a question, at least?"

"I should think you'd be sick of questions by now,"

They crossed the lobby, Larxene eyeing the ruined chandelier lying, as if discarded, in a corner, "What the hell did that?"

"That's your question?"

"What started those alarms? Before, when you ran off. Was that Axel?"

Lexeaus merely grunted deep in his throat, opening the door onto the courtyard, and nodding to Luxia's car, still parked where she left it.

"I'm going to need my..." Lexeaus cut her off, pressing her purse into her hands, "Keys."

"Good luck." Lexeaus told her.

"Am I getting a raise for this, at least?"

But he had retreated to the doorway, where he parked himself like a palace guardsman, stationed to watch her go.

"Thanks for the hospitality, asshole," she mumbled, unlocking the car and getting behind the wheel.

 _Way to go, Ax. Making things difficult for me, as per usual_.

As she started down the road, leaving the Mansion behind and letting the woods close in on her on either side, Larxene thought about Axel, about this boy, the Skeleton Key.

Why had Axel helped him out? How? Sure, Axel had begun to demonstrate something resembling a conscience since she'd last known him, but this...

Time to think about that later, she supposed. She'd have to find him first, convince him to give the kid back.

Which, in the end of things seemed like a pretty shit thing to do, but Larxene really wasn't convinced in her ability to stick it to the system when the system had the power to turn her brother into a vegetable.

Axel would understand. He had to. She wasn't going to give him a choice.

Twilight replaced the woods before too long. Larxene checked her clock radio. Half past midnight, she'd been at the Mansion almost all day. She wondered if Luxia had dragged himself to the E.R yet, or if he'd decided to lock her out of the house, as if _he_ were the one with the grievance.

Worse case scenario, he'd called the cops, but Larxene imagined she could take a bit of pleasure exposing his attempt at corporate espion...

Oh. Right. No sell there, unless she wanted to screw herself over too. She was as much a part of all this now as he was. For Demyx's sake sure, but...

"Shit," she breathed, pulling up alongside the house, its impeccable front garden illuminated in flashing blues and reds.

Larxene got out of the car, noting a few curious neighbors queuing up on the sidewalks, in their windows, watching with the requisite nosiness to be expected of the suburban upper middle class.

She quickened her pace as she approached the open door of the house, hurrying into the foyer. She could hear Zazu squawking, harsh, protracted bleats cutting into the eerie silence of the scene.

"Larxene," a voice from behind her, so sudden and so familiar that she whirled around with a short cry.

"S-Saix?" she stammered, looking him over, the navy blue jacket, his periwinkle hair tied back in a short ponytail in a way he hadn't worn it before, "What are you..."

"Stay calm," he told her, not unkindly, but firmly, stepping in front of her. Larxene looked over his shoulder, seeing a woman, another cop, bending over some shape in the living room.

"What the...Saix, what's going..."

"This is the girlfriend?" the woman got to her feet, stepping forward, giving Larxene a full view of the still form lying in the wreckage of the trellis, amongst all those shattered glass figures. Unmoving, unbreathing.

"We're gonna have to bring you in," Saix told her, right in her ear, but sounding far away, "For questioning."

"Luxia..." she couldn't take her eyes off the body, arms and legs spread out to either side, his head bent at an impossible, at a grotesque angle over his shoulder, "He's _dead_?"

"Not dead," said Saix grimly, "Murdered."

* * *

 **A/N:** So more twists, turns and developments? Less? I dunno, the ratio confuses me sometimes. Hope you guys appreciate me returning to the Underworld... As much as it may seem I keep introducing things and dropping them, I do plan for most everything to come back eventually, in true soapy fashion.

As for what becomes of Larxene and Squall's separate ultimatums, Axel and his new friend's bid for freedom, and our two plucky teen heroes' trials and tribulations in this Heart of Darkness, you'll have to wait for Chapter 21, out two Fridays from now!

See you then...


	21. Shows of Unity

Chapter 21, Shows of Unity

* * *

 **A/N:** A week later than usual...again. After I missed the deadline, I was like 'Oh, I'll do it over the weekend', but then I just figured I'd push it to a whole week on for the sake of convenience.

So...sorry, but here's a chapter! It's a new day in Radiant County, and the narrative won't focus as much on it as it did the previous day. Expect...

Well, you'll see.

* * *

"He changing his story?" asked Yuffie, crossing her arms.

"Nothing we haven't heard before," replied Saix, "Just louder and louder each time."

The bird flapped its wings, not moving from its tiny perch, croaking out its favorite word, " _Axel! Axel!_ "

"Not helping our guy's case, is he?"

"He's _our_ guy, now?" Saix looked at Yuffie with a frown.

She shook her head, smiling, "And here I was, thinking this would be an easy job. Sometimes I hate my big mouth."

"Eh, we all have our vices."

"Yeah, sometimes I even catch you laughing."

"You have not."

Yuffie rolled her eyes, "Sorry. I shouldn't be ribbing you."

"Why not? Squall never does it enough, this is kind of refreshing." he looked at Yuffie, who was still looking at the bird, arms crossed, as if in determined avoidance of the point.

"Because the bird won't stop saying the name of my neighborhood friend from back in the day? C'mon, Yuffie, I'm not that delicate."

She sighed, "I know you're not. But if you _wanted_ to break down and to hell with it, now's as good a time as any. I wouldn't blame you."

"Yeah, well...Axel's not my only neighborhood friend in trouble," he turned to look at Yuffie, "Larxene still isn't talking?"

"Oh, she's talking, and I've been taking notes. Haven't heard such sweet sailor talk since junior high volleyball."

"That's not even Larxene at her worst," he pulled down the collar of his turtleneck to expose the (still stinging) claw marks on the side of his neck, "And I can tell you worse stories."

"I told you, we could totally charge her with assaulting a police officer."

"I've told you, I'm fine,"

"She doesn't need to know that. We tell her she hurt a rookie detective, mention the time she'd get...put a different kind of squeeze on her."

"And then she flips? Tells us everything we need to know and more?" Saix shook his head, "Not Larxene. She'd see right through it. She can see through anything."

 _Well, almost anything_ , he thought ruefully, but put that aside. No point bothering with that _now_ , of all times.

Yuffie moved over to the desk, pushing aside some much perused files to sit down, "There's something about this whole thing that just stinks."

"That famous nose of yours, again?"

"Woman's intuition on steroids," Yuffie winked, "I just don't buy her murdering her boyfriend, leaving for half the day, and then just coming back, in his car, no less."

"We get a time of death, yet?"

"Nothing definite, but forensics are saying he was lying there for hours."

"Broke a coupla bones falling into that knock-off Steuben glass, huh?"

Yuffie cocked an eyebrow, "It was fake?"

"Everything in that house was fake." he sighed, moving over to stand in the open doorway, looking across the dispatch to the broad window, through which he could glimpse Tifa leaning over a featureless table, interrogating a messy-haired blond who was moving around quite energetically, cuff on her wrist notwithstanding.

"She really hasn't changed much," he said in a faraway voice, "Stubborn as ever, for one thing. Hell of a temper."

"Hot-blooded enough to kill?"

Saix was quiet for a while, "Back in Destiny...when they brought in that biker, Axel's friend, Riku. Everybody, Ratcliff, Hartford, even Squall, they all pegged him as guilty from jump. Not you."

"Not me. And I still believe it."

"Why? You never knew the kid, didn't know the victim, that girl. Why assume innocence?"

She thought about it, "Doesn't fit the crime. Riku may have been a hoodlum, or he may have been a prodigy who'd lost his way. Either way, that kinda guy doesn't stalk and kidnap one of his classmates."

"Intuition, then?"

"Why are you asking?"

"You know why."

"Yeah, I do, but I want you to say it,"

He put his hands in his pocket, sighing, "I know Larxene. I've known her since I was a kid..."

"And she doesn't seem like the kind of person who would beat a man senseless and leave him to die in her living room?"

Saix opened his mouth, but found he couldn't say anything, not with a straight face. Because he _did_ know Larxene, he knew her temper, her pride, the things she'd do to protect herself, to protect the people she loved...

"Larxene's never going to tell Tifa anything."

"Don't let Boobs fool you, she knows how to work a witness. Sure, not as good as me..."

"She wouldn't tell you anything either."

The smile vanished from Yuffie's face. She got to her feet, sighing, "I was wondering when we'd get to this."

"Get to what?" he cocked his head to the side, "She knows me, Yuffie, and she knows Axel..."

"And that's exactly why you can't talk to her."

"Why? Conflict of interest? Weren't you the one who told me we all have them, if you look hard enough? That it shouldn't make a difference?"

"Yeah, helping to find your bail jumper friend. This is a bit different..."

"Yeah, it is. Because Larxene already saw me, she knows I'm on this case."

"You're not on this case and neither am I. You were only at the crime scene because Harvey decided to throw you a bone."

"You don't have to sound so salty about it, it wasn't like I _asked_ him."

"The point is, we're already toeing a line," Yuffie shook her head, "I don't like it anymore than you do, Saix, but this isn't our department, it isn't our case..."

" _Axel_ is our case. And you know as well as I do that he's a part of this somehow."

"Step back for a second, Saix," Yuffie stood in the doorway, speaking in a harder voice than he'd ever heard her use, "What's got you so upset? That Larxene's been arrested, or that we haven't gotten a chance to arrest Axel?"

Saix felt his fingers twitch, his heartbeat spiking in his chest, "Don't go there, Yuffie."

"You don't want to interrogate Larxene about the murder, you want to ask her about Axel. You can at least do me the courtesy of admitting it."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" he growled the words, encroaching on her.

And, to his surprise, Yuffie grinned, "Well, what do you know? You've got buttons to push, after all."

"That's what this is about? You're afraid I'll lose my temper? Turn into some hothead cop without any warning?"

"Nah," she shook her head, "if anything, I feel better knowing you _do_ have feelings. Some people, they wear a badge long enough, they forget that they're human."

"Glad I passed the test."

He turned back to the window, and stopped. There was Larxene, sitting at the table, free hand against her cheek, drumming the fingers of her cuffed hand against the table. But Tifa...

"She's gone."

"Probably letting her stew for a bit, agonize by her lonesome," Yuffie observed, "Not the way I'd play it, but..."

"No," Saix cut her off, "Me neither."

And he started for the door, not even pausing to think another second about it. He could hear Yuffie's footsteps behind him but, to her credit, she didn't call out. Nothing to draw attention to him.

Maybe she wanted him to try his hand, after all. He could respect that. It had taken him a while to learn how to break the rules too, after all, but once he'd learned he'd been as good as any of the others.

Or almost as good.

Larxene looked up at him when he opened the door, wary face lighting up, but only just, "You're still blue."

"And you're still blond." he told her flatly,closing the door behind him.

"I was always blond," she shrugged, "Whatever those bitches at the sandlot used to say about me."

"They were just jealous."

"You still take my side," she smiled, sighing, "I was wondering if they'd bring you in."

"They didn't," Saix slipped into the chair across from her, which Tifa had clearly decided not to bother with, given how cold it was, "And I'm probably screwed a couple of ways from Sunday if they catch me, if not all six."

"You must really miss me," she said dryly.

"I did," he smiled, a short, pained smile, "Believe it or not."

"I missed you too. I think, for a while, I was telling myself not to. Too focused on starting my new adult life," she spread her hands out to either side of her, "And look where that got me."

"I'm sorry," he said at length, "about your boyfriend."

"That some cop technique? You say you're sorry and then I say 'Oh, don't be, he was a total shitbag', and then you've caught your killer?"

"That what Detective Lockhart tried?"

"Detective Lockhart is Sun Tzu in a push-up bra."

"Pretty chipper Sun Tzu,"

"Please don't tell me she's your partner, or anything."

"No, my partner is considerably more chipper, and I'm probably gonna have to buy her a drink after all this, if we still have our badges."

"Always too polite for the rest of us," she sighed. It occurred to Saix that she looked different in other ways too, besides the obvious.

Sure, the slacks and the blazer were new, nothing like Rex's jaunty beret and silk scarf tied around her waist, but there was something about her face as well. A paleness, a certain glossy cast to her eyes. Depression, maybe. Or just exhaustion.

Saix wondered if Axel had thought the same thing, when he'd seen him back at DPD.

"How long have you and Marluxia been together?"

"A few years," she answered quickly, but with an unmistakably reluctance in her voice, "I'd started working for _X-_ Corp a little bit before. He...he took a shining to me. Ask Push Up Tzu, I already told her."

"Shoulda figured you'd go into business one day, the way you ran the Dugout."

"Well, someone had to, while you boys tried to out-trick each others' bikes."

"You know how he died?"

Larxene met his eyes, "Broken neck." said with no inflection, no undue emotion, just a plain fact.

"And a pretty severe beating beforehand, maybe a struggle."

"Luxia was never all that good at struggling."

They sat there, on opposite ends of the table, looking at each other, sizing each other up, or that's what it felt like at least.

"Was he good to you?" Saix asked at last, "I mean...did he ever...hurt you, or anything?"

"That's your angle? Battered woman strikes back? You're smarter than that, Saix. Or you used to be."

"That's not why I asked. I was just...wondering."

Larxene laughed without much humor, "Nobody lays a hand on me if I don't want them to, that much hasn't changed. No, he never hurt me."

But there was something about how she said that, as if she'd changed a word at the last minute.

"He never hit you."

"That's what I said," but she paused, as if realizing it wasn't _quite_ what she'd said.

"What about Demyx?" he asked next, "He lives with you, right?"

"He didn't do this," Larxene said at once, almost getting to her feet, "He can't hurt anybody, you know him..."

"I do. And, again, not why I asked. I was just...wondering about him. Is he okay?"

"Demyx..." she said the name softly, sinking slowly back into the chair, "he..." her voice was hoarse, choked up; she was forcing back tears, "...he has a band."

"Just like he always wanted." Saix smiled, but Larxene leaned over the table before he could say anything else.

"You've got to get me out of here, Saix. Please!" she spoke rapidly, hushed, eyes bright, not with the same passionate vigor she'd had back then, but with a fearsome purpose, a determination, "I won't pretend Luxia and I were the world's best couple, but I didn't kill him."

"Fine. You didn't kill him," Saix shrugged, "Maybe you can help us find out who did." he was quiet for a short time, "The...um...the bird in the living room."

"Demyx's," she said at once, "He was teaching it to sing along with him."

That did sound like something Demyx would do. Saix couldn't help but chuckle.

"Since we found the body, the bird won't stop saying one name."

Almost in the same breath, Saix and Larxene said, "Axel."

She sighed, "It always comes back to him, doesn't it?"

"Have you seen him?" he asked.

"Have you?"

And suddenly he was 18 again, young and stupid and freezing cold, tears frozen on his face, new tears refusing to form, as much as he wanted to. Larxene standing across from him, scarf pulled tight around her neck, face flushed red.

" _I didn't mean to hurt you. I...I should have known better._ "

" _Yeah. Me too._ "

"Not as recently as I would have liked," he said at last, "Are you gonna answer my question, or are you just gonna throw my mistake back in my face?"

Larxene said nothing, just stared at him, bright hazel eyes cutting into him, the same ones that had once held nothing but pity for him, as if he were some sad sick puppy left out in the cold. Now just resentful, angry, but not defeated.

Larxene, at least, hadn't let herself be defeated.

"Step away from the suspect, Detective!" the door had opened, and Tifa stood in the frame, her soft, usually smiling face turned to stone, "Outside. _Now_."

Saix turned from Larxene to Tifa, seeing Yuffie standing a little behind her, looking abashed.

Still feeling Larxene's eyes on him, cold and imperious, he pushed past Tifa.

"You don't have to tell me twice."

* * *

Oh, for the unbridled enthusiasm of a middle-aged school administrator on assembly day.

"To your places, everyone, to your places!" Principal Skellington sang, like _actually_ sang, complete with trilled 'R's' and pirouettes, prancing up and down the hastily erected stage in the center of the football field.

"It's like inauguration day!" Selphie observed, loosening her woolly purple scarf (there was no way she was going to survive the first chorus, that thing being as tight as it was), "Only everybody lost."

"Think you're onto something, sis," said Wakka lazily from the bleachers, where he had spread out a faded Navajo print rug (that Mother would surely have him flayed for, if she learned it left the house) to mark his territory, "You oughta be a poet."

"Please, I'm not _that_ sad, yet. Getting there in the loneliness department, though,"

"You? Lonely?" Wakka scoffed, "When did that happen? Oh..." his face fell, "well, yeah, I guess you _are_ short two friends..."

"Oh, please," Selphie rolled her eyes, "Not even what I was getting at."

"Well, in that case...what's eating you?"

"In no particular order, big brother of mine: performance anxiety, normal anxiety, a crippling depression that's been systematically robbing me of my sleep for several nights, and it's also freezing cold."

As if cottoning on to the last one, Wakka adjusted his floppy-eared sherpa cap, "Is it Teedus?"

"His name, for the billionth time, is _tie dus_ , you putz," Selphie harrumphed, "And yes, it's him."

Wakka nodded slowly, "So...you guys are, like, a thing now?"

"Oh please, could you _be_ any more obvious?"

"I'm not trying to move in on your territory, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, of course not, you just want an excuse to knock somebody's lights out, and why not indulge the Big Brother Defends Little Sister stereotype at last?"

"So you _are_ a thing?"

"I don't know!" Selphie moved to sit down on the bleachers next to him, but stopped herself, realizing that any serious movement would be crippling with her coat fixed on this tightly.

She looked across the field where Tidus was huddled up with the rest of his teamies, Zack included, all dressed in full uniform so they could do a chorus line or some such stupidity. Selphie didn't know, she'd been determinedly trying not to care.

"Heard there was a fight,"

"And who told you that?"

Wakka shrugged, "Word gets around."

"Irvine," Selphie nodded, smiled fixed, "What, is he your dealer, or something?"

"Is Teedus taking advantage of you?"

"God, no!" she shook her head, "Hard as it may be to believe, Wakka, but I _am_ capable of getting in my feelings, no boys involved."

"If you say so," but Wakka's smile indicated he hadn't given up yet.

And, really, Selphie found she couldn't believe it herself. No, she knew good and well that there were plenty of boys involved in this. Three at the very least, four if she wanted to count Irvine deciding to play Greek Chorus for no other reason than because it amused him.

"And what about the other one?" Wakka prompted.

"What other one?"

"New Sora." Wakka's smile slipped a notch or two, but somehow lost none of its wattage.

"Don't be a dick. Zack's nothing like Sora, he lacks the self esteem and he's considerably better for it."

"No offense to Sora."

"All offense to Sora, it doesn't mean I love him any less."

" _Love_? Jeez, sis..."

"Oh, shut up! That's the problem with you, you're afraid of feelings."

" _Me_? Sister, I'll have you know, I am _down_ with my feelings. If we were any more in touch, Mom would make me propose to them."

"Mom has unfortunately old-fashioned ideas, the lovable hypocrite. I meant you in general. Boys."

"You do that a lot, you know."

"What? Call out boys? Not without reason."

Wakka shrugged, "Maybe not. But for someone who's always acting like she knows what's up in everybody else's life, you're kinda a mess when it comes to yours. No offense."

"I'm different," said Selphie automatically, admittedly without much conviction.

"Oh, yeah?" he looked at her, eyebrow cocked in an air of practiced skepticism he really had no place affecting, "Why?"

"I'm...more complicated."

"Listen, Selphie," he leaned forward, "Love is a crapshoot."

"Oh, thank you, enlightened one. When can I subscribe to your newsletter? If it helps, I'm a Gemini."

"You think I don't know?"

"What I _know_ is we're not talking about love."

"So you don't care about Tidus? Or about Squats?"

"Zack, his name is Zack," she crossed her arms, "And I...I never said that."

"Listen, if I know you at all, I know you never give up, no matter what happens or how stupid it is."

"Gee, thanks, Oprah." Selphie crossed her arms, looking back across the field at the football team.

"I'm just saying what I know. If it's important to you, you go for it. You're the go-getter in this family."

"Well, I never really had much competition where that's concerned."

Wakka gave her a light punch on the arm, but he was smiling. Selphie couldn't keep back a little laugh of her own.

Maybe he was right. She'd never tell him that to his face, but maybe he was. To a point.

"Save a spot for Mom, alright?" she told him, already moving away from the bleachers.

"She's coming?"

"Once she finds her way out of brunchtime Sangria, probably."

She was tempted to make a face at Wakka, but she decided against it. If she looked back, all was lost. Besides, it was bad enough that she, the only self-respecting party in this entire situation, had to make the first move here. Worse if she had to keep deferring to her brother like a shy kid.

After all, this was supposed to be Selphie's forte.

"Heyo, boys." she greeted the ballers as she approached them, "How's your school spirit?"

It was amazing, really, herd psychology. Everyone defers to the leader, without a pause to contemplate. So it was, as each and every one of them looked over at Tidus, with the same fluidity of movement as the Red Sea parting under the influence of Moses's staff.

"It's good," said Tidus simply. Selphie could smell a 'why' in there somewhere, but clearly he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of actually _saying_ it.

"Good to hear," she grinned, "I was beginning to worry some of us had given up all hope."

Tidus gritted his teeth, a rosy tinge appearing in his cheeks. Selphie allowed herself a little nod of satisfaction. Some people remained as regular as clockwork, and Tidus was the most regular person she knew.

Well, for a certain definition of 'regular'.

"Well," she cleared her throat, looking around at them all in a general sense, "just want to wish you boys luck. No championship at stake this time, so no pressure."

 _It's a good thing you're a girl and these guys are all mostly civilized_.

"Break a leg!" she told them, looking only at Tidus.

"You too." he replied shortly. One doofus, probably the punter, had the audacity to make some drawn out 'ooooh' noise. Selphie made a mental note to double check his name and locker for later. Someone merited an early Christmas present, and there were luckily several environmental alternatives to coal.

But for now, Selphie would have to attempt the tried and true stratagem of turning the other cheek and contemplating the manner of her revenge. She turned and started off, heading toward the stage. Maybe she could hijack the mic for a sound test. A little 'Doe a deer a female deer' to get everyone in the spirit of suffering.

"Hey...hey, Selphie!" a voice at her ear, accompanied by frantic panting, warm breath at her side.

This was a surprise, but Selphie reminded herself to not be _that_ girl. She would betray no weakness, and therefore didn't even turn to acknowledge her pursuer as she said, "Yes, Zack?"

"I...um...I wanna say something."

"How refreshing."

"I'm sorry."

Selphie stopped, turning to look at Zack, arms crossed, "Are you now? Dare I ask for what?"

"For...for being a jerk. When I...got into it with Tidus yesterday..."

"You mean when you socked him in the face?"

"...I shouldn't have taken it out on you, you've been...you've been really good about everything with...um..."

"Your new roommate?" Selphie asked meaningfully.

Zack nodded, abashed, "Tidus just doesn't get it. Cloud..."

"Ix-nay," Selphie sing-songed.

"...he's not a bad guy, he's just..."

"Full of secrets?"

His shoulders fell, "He's my brother. You get that, right?"

"I get wanting to kick my stubborn mule of a big bro in the teeth sometimes, yes," but Selphie sighed, "But I'd be pretty pissed if anyone else tried it."

Zack smiled, "Cloud's a bit tricky to get along with, that's all. And when he left..." he shrugged, "things weren't going the best they could at home, you know?"

"Because he left? Or is that _why_ he left?"

"Both, really. And, look, I'd be lying if I said I was cool with him just up and ditching us and everything. I'm not, I...I really hated him for a while."

"But he's yours to hate," Selphie concluded, "No one else's."

"I know, it's stupid."

"Family's always stupid, it wouldn't be family if it wasn't." she bit her lip, "Do you trust him?"

"Do I...what?"

"Do you trust your brother? I mean...that he's okay and...and everything?"

"I mean...I trust that he really wanted to come home."

"He told you that?"

Zack was quiet, which was all the answer Selphie needed. But she realized, even as she asked these questions, what silly questions they really were.

Of course Zack trusted his brother. Barring the fact that Zack would probably trust grim death if he introduced himself politely, Selphie supposed it was only common human nature to trust the ones we love.

And Cloud, whatever else he was, wherever he came from, whatever had happened to him there, trusted his brother enough to know he'd be welcomed back safely when he returned.

Maybe Tidus was right to be suspicious, but Selphie couldn't say if he was right to have taken it out on Zack.

For the first time, Selphie found she could really understand those unspoken 'bro codes' she and Zack had spoken about so long ago. At least when it came to actual bros.

"You go with your gut, String the Second," she told him at length, putting on a smile, "Ball's in your court."

"Wrong sport, but..." he chuckled, "...I will. Thanks. I..." he paused, "...I hope I didn't make things weird."

"Oh, things are always weird, they've only gotten weirder and that's only partially your fault."

"No, I meant...weird with you and Tidus. I know you guys were..."

"Were we?" she cocked her head to the side, cocking an eyebrow in a quizzical expression.

Zack blinked, "Um...well, I mean, I thought..."

"I'm glad you're thinking. Someone's got to," she turned and started over for the stage, "Best be off! Gotta get some warm-ups in."

"Warm-ups!" she heard Zack saying behind her, "Yeah. Yeah, sure. Warm-ups. Right."

 _Watch yourself, Selph. You probably just gave him a hundred ideas and all of them the wrong ones_.

But she could trust Zack to be smarter than that, she rationalized. She was less sure if she could trust herself.

* * *

Sora opened his eyes, feeling as if someone had been using his head for punting practice. It had gotten better though, that was one thing. What had before felt like someone had ripped his head apart and was trying, against pressure, to put it back together again, was now just a steady throb.

He could live with that, he supposed. What he _couldn't_ live with was the ever present soundtrack that, even now, seemed to be playing on loop in his sterile white prison.

" _I close my eyes, then I drift away/Into the magic night I softly say/A silent prayer, like dreamers do..._ "

" _Then I fall asleep to dreams_ ," Sora sang along warily, sitting up, " _My dreams of you_."

He looked around his new accommodations. Despite looking similar to the operating theater Axel had broken him out from (before he'd apparently decided altruism was for chumps), _this_ blank white room was bigger and considerably less doctor's office-ish.

No sign of Vexen's terrible Roy Orbison karaoke either, so Sora assumed he was alone. Maybe Axel had been caught after all, and they were screwing around with him in whatever way they'd been screwing around with Sora.

He didn't take much comfort in the notion, which Sora accepted as testament to his moral character. Why not? It wasn't like he had much else going for him at this point.

Groaning, he eased himself down from the cot he'd been lying on, observing the ridiculously thin mattress and the postage stamp that passed for his pillow.

He really missed home. Sure, he'd been tossing it over in his head for days, but this was the first time he felt comfortable enough to admit it to himself.

Something in his head told him it was morning, and he'd slept the whole night through. Sora wondered if his Mom was awake yet, if she was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping her coffee and flipping through the paper, listening to the same Laura Nyro album she'd been listening to since Sora was a baby.

Or maybe she'd stopped all that, now that he was gone. What did she think had happened to him? Did she know he was alive? Sometimes you heard stories, peoples' parents or their husband or wife or whatever, they just knew their loved one was alive, somewhere deep down in their heart or whatever.

Was she looking for him?

Somehow, Sora hoped she wasn't. The idea of her getting anywhere near this ever-deepening sinkhole of really shit luck he'd fallen into wasn't pleasant.

If, say, Tidus decided to lead the whole Destiny High football team in a search for him, however, Sora supposed he wouldn't mind. He missed having someone to yell at.

Or maybe he just missed his friends.

There was another cot in this room, but it looked unused. A mirror on the wall, spotless and probably lined so that he couldn't shatter it to improvise a shiv, in case Vexen decided to break out the rubber gloves again.

A low doorway in the corner led into a spartan bathroom, but at least there was a shower. Sora couldn't remember the last time he'd had one. He usually made it a point not to think too much about that kind of thing, but he was pretty sure he must really stink by now.

All in all, it was like a monochromatic hotel room, just cleaner and considerably more depressing. Sora decided it was in his best interest to get the hell out while he still could.

 _If_ he still could. A shower had waited this long, it could wait longer.

He walked the length of the wall, running his fingers along the smooth white paint, looking for any cracks or irregularities that would indicate a door. He was about halfway through doing this when he heard a hissing from behind him, from a new opening in the opposite wall.

Sora moved his hand from the nearly invisible switch pad he'd triggered, looking from it to the open doorway.

 _Not much of a prison_ , he mused, wondering if they'd given up or if there was some considerably more sinister twist to this after-all.

He felt ready to bet on the latter.

Still, he moved slowly to the door, quietly as he could, listening for any indication of another person lying in wait just outside. The door opened up in a stark white hallway, lined with featureless white doors. Sora assumed this must be one of the innumerable basement levels, given there were no windows and it was about as cold as a vegetable crisper.

The first thing he went for, practically sprinting down the hall, was the broad, much more poorly painted, elevator doors at the end of the passage.

Sora pressed the button, waited. No luck.

"Because that would be too easy."

Maybe it was out of order after his little fainting spell. Sora still wasn't entirely sure what had happened back there. Only that Axel was a considerably shitty person.

"So no going forward..." Sora turned around behind him, to glimpse the blank wall way at the other end of the hallway, "No going back."

There must have been a dozen doors ranked all down the passage, six to the left and six to the right, eleven counting his room out.

"Not like there's anything better to do," and he started down the hall, tapping each door he came across, looking for a latch or a switch or something.

A few did open, revealing boxy stockrooms, walls of file cabinets, and once a room full of weird glass jars on metal shelves, each one containing some peculiar, swirling blue substance that Sora wasn't much inclined to think about.

Every other door Sora came across was sealed shut, nothing but silence behind them. The whole place felt empty, dead. Like he'd been abandoned here for no other reason than to be forgotten.

He stopped in the middle of the hall, arms hanging limply at his sides, looking around with a resigned sigh.

"Hello?" he called out, surprised at volume of the echo his voice produced, even with the low ceiling and close walls, "Anybody?"

He walked around in a close circle, noting the staid stillness around him. Everything white, cold, vacant, except for him. If he looked too long at one spot, everything appeared to begin to blend together into some weird homogeneous pale mass.

Not exactly an inspiring sight.

"Forget it," he sighed, tearing his eyes from the wall and making back for his room, such as it was.

As he approached, he caught sight of the door directly across from it, realizing he hadn't tried it yet.

And, not one for giving up even the most fruitless of tasks once he'd gotten this far, Sora reached out and gave it a little tap with one hand.

The door opened.

"Riku?" Sora blurted it out, with no regard for subtlety, secrecy or, hell, giving a nasty shock to the guy strapped to the dentist's chair a few feet from him.

"So they got you too, huh?" Sora asked, trying to sound as casual as the situation allowed, which wasn't very much.

Riku was fastened to the chair with leather straps, binding his wrists and ankles, as Sora had been when he came to in this place. There was a nasty welt on his brow, bruises and scrapes on his arms and legs. His clothes were tattered too, his shirt frayed at the edges and the cuffs of his jeans looking like they'd been through a shredder.

His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling in a shaky, uneven pattern, the one indication he was alive.

"Hey...Riku?" Sora moved closer, looking him up and down, looking from him to the boxy monitor connected with thick cords to the chair. There were numbers, lines, some kind of reading, but Sora couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"I'm...uh...I'm sorry I left you hanging before," he continued, "For what it's worth, I think we might've stood half a chance against these guys together."

Nothing. No miraculous spike on the monitor, no other signs of life besides these paltry, feeble ones. Sora let out a sigh.

"I don't get it. Everyone...Styx and Stones, shady tech company, your biker club...they all _really, really_ want you. But they'll be fine taking me too, if it comes to that. Which, frankly, I think is kinda insulting, but..."

He stopped, looking back up at Riku's still, solemn face, "Do you...do you even know I'm talking to you, right now? I mean, I'd have thought you'd be flipping out by now."

Reaching out slowly, tentatively, Sora gave Riku a little poke in the shoulder. Nothing happened.

"It's me. Sora. You know...happy, bouncy, smiley, Sora?"

He gave him a tiny slap on the head. Still nothing.

"Me! Sora!" he felt his voice rise, something like legitimate disappointment welling up in him, "The one and only love of your life, remember?"

Nothing. Sora could feel his heart beating in his chest. This wasn't right, it wasn't fair. Whatever else Riku was, he didn't deserve this. Sora wouldn't wish it on anybody.

After all...you couldn't choose who you love, right? Selphie was always saying that, in the world-weary voice of someone who's been in and out of love all of her life.

And...and love wasn't necessarily a _bad_ thing, was it? Even if the other person didn't love you back? Sora realized that he'd never really known what rejection was like, but he imagined it usually wasn't immediately followed by a kidnapping.

"I'm...I'm sorry," he added, "I was an asshole to you before. I know...I know if it was me where you were...I wouldn't've known what to do with myself. If you'd stormed out on me, I mean. And...hey, where do I get off, right? Someone says they like you, I guess you're supposed to feel flattered."

He cleared his throat, "I'd let you out, but...um...but I don't know if this thing is keeping you alive or killing you, and I don't wanna risk it. We've got...er...we've got a lot to talk about."

He looked around. Everything silent and still, Riku not moving at all besides the usual breaths.

"You're really out of it, huh?" Sora chuckled, despite himself, "Reminds me...this one time, I was in...uh...flag football. Don't laugh."

Riku didn't laugh.

"And I...I tripped and hit my head. Don't ask how, I blame Tidus. Well, anyway, I was out for like, two whole days. A coma, I guess. My Mom, she...she worries a lot. That's her thing. The way she tells it, she sat by my bed the whole time. No sleep, no food. Just waiting. And...well, this is kinda corny, but you're in no place to judge, so..."

He shrugged, smiling despite himself, "My mom, she...she gets so worried that I'm never gonna wake up, and she'll lose me forever, and...and whenever she tells this part of the story she starts crying..." he tried a laugh, realizing as he did so that a tear had escaped onto his cheek, "She uh...she leaned over and..."

He looked one way, then the other, feeling his face heat up, "She leaned over and..."

Sora leaned over, getting on tiptoes, and planted a kiss on Riku's lips.

They were dry and cracked, but warm. Sora could feel his breath mingling with his. The floor seemed suddenly unsteady beneath his feet, and Sora found himself putting his hands out on Riku's arms.

He opened his eyes, slowly, pulling back from Riku. He felt funny, light and heavy all at once, as if a fresh cool wind was blowing into his face, at the same time as a horrible stormy gust came at him from the back, pinning him in place.

Riku's eyes fluttered open, looking not keen or predatory or even clever, but childlike. Or, maybe boylike. Not self-assured, not all-knowing. A kid's eyes.

"S-Sora?" he breathed the name.

"Oh my God," Sora could think of nothing else to say, "It _worked_."

"You..." Riku looked somewhere between smiling and frowning, "...did you..."

"Listen, it's a long story," Sora forced himself to move, checking on the leather straps, "But now I'm getting you out of here."

"Wait, Sora..." Riku stopped him, his voice rising, "Don't."

"Don't what? Let you out? Look, I get it, you're guilty and all that, but I'm not leaving you in this place. You don't deserve it."

"Sora, you don't..."

But he was cut off by a long, drawn out beeping tone coming from the monitor, an insistent, plaintive screech as the data on the screen was replaced with a bold red box in which the word 'DANGER' was helpfully printed in bold digital letters.

"Aw fuck, not _again_!" Sora swore, "C'mon, hold still, I think I can figure it..."

"Stop it!" Riku cried out, suddenly short and harsh, so much that Sora couldn't help but be taken aback.

Riku lay there, breathing deeply, "Just...just go, okay? Please, while you still..."

A hiss as the door opened behind them.

Sora recognized Xaldin, the long-haired giant who'd casually suggested they kill him like Ole Yeller back in the woods.

"I'll credit Vexen where he's due," he drawled, "He was right on the money on this one."

Before Sora could even think of a retort, Xaldin had closed the distance between them in two quick strides, closing one hand around his neck, choking the scream out of his throat before it was halfway formed.

"Let go of him!" Riku cried out, "Bastard, he didn't do anything to you!"

"Come now. You should understand by now there's nothing personal about this."

Xaldin turned for the door, practically dragging Sora behind him, much as he kicked and struggled. He could hear Riku crying out his name after him.

"Sora! Sora, it's gonna be okay! I'll..."

The door closed between them, shutting out whatever Riku was going to do.

Xaldin took Sora across the hall to his own room, tossing him onto his cot like he was nothing more than a misshapen pillow. He sprawled out there, panting raggedly, pressing his hand to his neck, which burned where Xaldin had taken it.

"I'll admit, not many things perplex me," Xaldin was saying, taking a stance like a guard on duty, "But love is one of them. It makes fools of the best of us, and animals of the worst. And for what? Some fleeting feeling of satisfaction, doomed to be dashed to pieces at the slightest change?"

"I..." each word stabbed Sora like a knife as it came out, "...I _don't_ love him!"

"Then ask yourself," a ghost of a smile played on Xaldin's lips, "why you're so angry?"

He left the room, the door sliding shut behind him. Sora lay alone on his cot, one hand still pressed against his throat, staring up at the ceiling.

His other hand shaking, he pressed it against his lips, feeling something like the coldest rain and the hottest shower wash over him.

He began to cry, more than he could ever remember crying in his whole life.

* * *

"Gotta say, I'm digging the treatment!" Cid declared, unzipping his jacket approximately an eighth of an inch, which clearly indicated a relaxed state, "Like being in the VIP box!"

"A VIP box would be heated," Amphitrite groused from beneath several layers of chemise wool, "But I'm glad to see all those annual charity drives have kept this place well-lit."

Celeste squinted up into the blaring lights that lined the football field, "Well, at least no one's going to fall asleep."

"Yes, such a pity," Amphitrite sighed, "Well, at least there's food."

"Aw, you're just saying that 'cuz I'm here!" Cid piped in from her other side.

"Are you? I wouldn't know. You see, I think I've gone blind..."

Celeste locked eyes with Cid and gave him a long-suffering smile, which he returned with a wink. She looked across the field to the buffet table, where poor Tiana and Aerith were lined up shoulder to shoulder, standing guard over the heating trays that, true to their word, Milo and Ms. Trepe had gotten to Destiny High with little trouble.

"They must be freezing," she pointed out.

"Eh, they're probably warmer than the rest of us put together," said Cid, "Got the gas on those trays turned up to the max."

"How delightful," said Amphitrite dryly, "Maybe the smoke from the explosion will draw our missing youth back to us."

"Amphitrite," Celeste scolded, but Amphitrite merely tittered.

"I'm sorry for putting a damper on things," the old woman continued, "Just that I'm finding it powerfully difficult to put a neat spin on this display."

"Show of unity," Celeste said warily, "That's what the principal called it, at least. We come together and celebrate things so that we can...help each other heal."

"How inspired. He should work for the greeting card company." she produced an extraordinarily nasal breath, a sharp whistle that startled Cid where he sat.

"What about your teacher?"

" _My_ teacher?" Celeste cocked an eyebrow.

"Yes, your friend from your Saturday night revelry."

"We talking about the fella with the glasses?" Cid chuckled.

"You know him too?"

"Came in yesterday to pick up the food. Real deer in headlights kinda kid. Thought he was gonna choke on his tongue when Cel spoke to him."

"Both of you, really," Celeste rolled her eyes, "I've got considerably more to worry about than Sora's history teacher having the hots for me."

"Does he?" asked Cid, shrugging, "Look, Celeste, seems to me you've got nothing to lose. Sora ain't gonna turn up any faster if you stay alone and biting your fingernails."

"First of all, I don't bite my nails. It's a nasty habit, and it took me years to wean Sora off it."

"I still bite my nails," said Amphitrite flatly, "One of few luxuries still allowed me at this age."

"Second of all, Milo doesn't like me."

"Milo. Sounds like a dog's name."

"My brother had a dog named Milo, when we were kiddies," Cid chuckled, "Doberman, but had the temper of a baby. Real gentle giant..."

"He's hung up on Aerith," Celeste looked over to where their Singing Waitress was standing over the buffet table, cheeks rosy in the cold, but still chatting and laughing with Tiana despite all that.

"Aerith?" Cid chuckled, "Bit more in his league, at least."

"Was that a dig or a compliment?"

"Whatever you want it to be, Cel."

She elbowed him in the side, laughing lightly, "He tried picking her up at the Dalman Club Saturday night. I say _trying_ , because he wasn't very good at it. It's why she left early."

"Still hung up on her mystery man, eh?"

Celeste gave him a look, "Teasing her about it isn't going to help her any. And then yesterday, when he came to pick up the food, he couldn't take his eyes off Aerith, starting all over apologizing to her for the club..."

"How delightfully saccharine," commented Amphitrite, "I can feel my blood sugar skyrocketing as we speak."

"And, in the end, he's really not my type."

"You've got a type?" Cid asked, "News to me."

"I don't have a type, that's just the thing. I tried the relationship thing once before, and I'm really not keen on trying it again. Sora's my concern, right now, and it's not helping me if I gossip with two people _supposedly_ older and wiser like I'm back in school."

"There's no shame in having feelings for someone, Celeste," said Amphitrite in as offhanded a voice as Celeste would have thought possible, "There's nothing better for reminding you you're human. Sometimes I miss it."

"Being human?" Celeste asked with a wry smile.

"Having feelings," she shrugged, "But age tempers everything, I suppose. You get to a certain point, and nothing can touch you anymore. It's really quite sad."

Celeste thought about a rebuttal for that, but couldn't spend much time on it, as a harsh static scratch sounded across the field, putting a reluctant end to the hum of conversation.

Principal Skellington stood on the little stage in the center of the field, at a podium much too short for him, holding a microphone in his long, thin hands.

"Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen, boys, girls, friends and acquaintances..."

"What is this?" Amphitrite hissed in Celeste's ear, "The United Nations?"

"Thank you for joining our school community, to honor our missing friends, and to raise our voices together for their return," clearly finding the podium too much of a nuisance, Skellington moved out from behind it, pacing back and forth across the stage with a bounce in his step.

"Loss is a difficult and confusing thing... When someone we care about vanishes, a piece of our hearts vanishes with them. As your principal, I like to think a little bit of my heart belongs to each and every student who passes through those doors over yonder," he nodded to the outline of the Destiny High building just behind them.

"But I know those little pieces are nothing to the spaces reserved in the hearts of family and friends. We all loved Sora and Kairi."

"Lord, he's slipping into the past tense," commented Amphitrite, loudly enough that some people in the bleacher above them whispered to each other.

"I don't think there's a soul among us who can deny the special thrill of seeing our own star running back lifted high above the shoulders of his teammates after that semi-final match against Departure."

A couple of laughs, a few whoops and cheers, sounded from the stands, including one exuberant, "We are Destiny High!" that got a couple of claps.

Celeste herself couldn't hide a smile, recalling those games she'd been able to attend, seeing her son hailed as some sort of conquering hero. She'd never really understood football, but she'd be damned if she didn't see why Sora loved it.

"And I know there is no one here today who can speak with anything but words of love and appreciation for Kairi."

There were a few more whoops and a couple of shouts, but not nearly as many. But Celeste was aware of Amphitrite making a little noise of approval somewhere beneath all those mufflers.

"When a person touches your life in a special way, a bond is formed, and it connects you to that person for all time," Skellington nodded, as if he was quite singularly convinced in this.

"And when we are worried about that person, when we're scared for them, that bond can hurt us, as much as it uplifts us when we're around that person. But we can find strength in remembering that these people have touched many of us. And, because of that, we're all connected."

"You don't say?" Cid gave Celeste a little skeptical smirk. She shrugged at him.

It was a pretty sentiment, Celeste supposed, though she wasn't sure about it. Maybe for some people, it was true. Hell, she knew she had a connection to her own son, but then again, what kind of mother would she be if she didn't? And Amphitrite, stoic though she was, clearly had a bond with her granddaughter.

But other people...other friends and teammates and teachers. She wondered, really, how many of these dozens of people sitting in the bleachers around her really _loved_ Sora and Kairi. If they cared, or if they'd just deluded themselves into believing they cared, simply because of how sad and distressed everyone was.

When Sora had been very small, and Celeste's mother had waged that ugly crusade to wrest her son from her arms, people had sympathized with her. What few friends had remained to her after she'd had her son, had expressed their contempt of her mother, their support for her.

But when it had really come down to it, when Celeste was at her lowest, and she didn't think anyone could save her, she had known she was alone, and their words were just words.

And, realizing she was alone, alone but for Sora, Celeste had finally found the strength to save herself.

But where had that left her? She was still alone, veritably friendless, the only people who cared about her seeming to treat her as some sort of creature to be petted and pitied and protected. And her son was still gone.

"It is my hope, that through this assembly," Skellington continued with a flourish of his arms, "You all remember that one particular thing: none of us are truly alone. And, in our concern for Sora and Kairi, in our love for them, we may find a new strength, and a new hope."

It occurred to Celeste that he hadn't mentioned Riku and, indeed, nobody else seemed to care. Celeste wasn't really sure anymore to what degree Riku had been involved in Kairi's disappearance. Only that he was as vanished as her son.

She wondered if he had any family, or any friends. Was Skellington not talking about him, because he knew that not a single one among them had a spot in Riku's heart?

Celeste thought about that, and found the cold air biting her face was just that much colder.

Maybe she should be grateful for her supposedly limitless web of strength and love and hope. Better that than nothing at all.

"Thank you all," Skellington nodded one final time, looking around at the applauding crowd, his face glowing in the gray misty light of the mid-afternoon.

"Now, our first act of the day... A song, by our very own Selphie Tilmitt!"

Several cheers, whoops, one or two, 'You go, girl!'s' for reasons Celeste wouldn't bother to contemplate, as Selphie emerged from somewhere farther down the bottom bleacher from them, dressed in a handsomely tailored coat that looked more expensive than Celeste's cumulative wardrobe.

Twiddling her fingers in a general sense to the crowd, and blowing innumerable kisses at them with her other hand, Selphie bounded up the short steps to the stage, accepting the microphone from Skellington, who bowed at her graciously.

Celeste supposed it was a good thing she was still allowed to perform, after that fiasco with Tidus and Zack during auditions yesterday. Not that it was any of her business, but it hadn't seemed fair to saddle Selphie with detention just for trying to break the boys up.

Then again, she wasn't about to presume she knew what the hell was going on between those three. She'd barely been able to understand her own son, and look where that had ended up.

"Thanks," Selphie spoke into the mic, doing a masterful job of keeping her composure even when the thing screeched again for no discernible reason, "in case you didn't know, I've known Sora and Kairi...wow, I guess my whole life. Kairi was..." she stopped, then, with more effort, "... _is_ my best friend in the whole world."

Celeste reached over and put a hand over Amphitrite's. The old woman looked at her and, though her mouth was covered, she could see her eyes were smiling at last.

"And...er...if Principal Skellington doesn't mind me using my platform for a bit of gossip," she took a nice side-step away from Skellington as she said this, as if to deter him just in case, "They love each other. So much. More than...more than any two people I've ever known."

A couple of 'Awwwwws' and so on came up from the crowd. Celeste found herself thinking of Sora in his hospital bed, just a week ago now. The way Kairi had pored over him, looking at him with such a sweet, soft tenderness.

More often than not, Celeste knew, young love ended in sadness and heartbreak. But her son and Amphitrite's granddaughter...somehow, someway they had made something for each other. Something special.

After all, Sora wouldn't even be gone right now, if he didn't love Kairi so much that he would do anything for her, go anywhere, even into the proverbial, as well as literal, eye of the storm.

"So, for two of the best people I know...and in full faith that they'll be back with us again soon," Selphie snapped her fingers, "Hit it!"

Over at the piano at the other end of the stage, a long-suffering Ms. Trepe began to play.

"Well, at least it isn't Cher," muttered Amphitrite.

" _It must have been cold there in my shadow/To never have sunlight on your face..._ " Selphie held the mic in one hand, eyes closed, face turned up as if there were a thousand cameras on her at once. Celeste had to give it to her, she had a natural talent, once she dropped all the histrionics.

" _You were content to let me shine, that's your way/You always walked a step behind..._ " she opened her eyes, beginning to walk forward down the length of the stage, " _So I was the one with all the glory/While you were the one with all the strength/A beautiful face without a name for so long/A beautiful smile to hide the pain..._ "

Celeste wondered if she was singing about Kairi who, she supposed had been the more subdued of the two girls, indeed, of all Sora's friends. Maybe that's what had drawn Sora to her in the first place. She wasn't trying too hard to be anything. She didn't need to.

" _Did you ever know that you're my hero_ ," Selphie hit that high note reverberating around the field to several appreciative cheers, " _And everything I would like to be?_ "

She spread her arms out to either side, clearly drinking all this in, " _I can fly higher than an eagle/For you are the wind beneath my..._ "

The lights went out, with a muffled click, Selphie's mic cutting out at once, the last word of the verse drowned out by an upsurge of confused mutterings from up and down the bleachers.

"What the..." Cid began, leaning forward as if the better to see what had happened.

But whatever it was, Selphie saw it first, "Oh my God!" loud enough for Celeste to hear as she got to her feet along with so many others, to see a small, slight figure standing at the edge of the field, stumbling over the thick cords that connected the stage to the lights.

"That isn't..." said Celeste, but before she could finish, she felt Amphitrite's hand on her arm, squeezing it more tightly than she'd have thought possible.

Without a word, Amphitrite started across the field at a quick clip, all but dragging Celeste alongside her, the head of a veritable stampede of people clambering down from the bleachers for a better look.

The figure had sunk to its knees in the cold grass, looking exhausted. A girl, petite and pale, barefoot, wearing only a white smock, dirty and torn in several places. Her hair, matted with twigs and dried leaves, was a rich cornsilk blond. But even so...

"Holy shit..." Tidus had drawn up near them, staring down with wide eyes, "it _is_ her."

"Give her some air!" cried Cid, spreading her arms wide, "She's fainted."

"Amphitrite..." Celeste turned to the woman at her side, but she paid her no mind, letting go of her arm and practically dropping to the ground beside the girl, her scarves slipped from around her face, revealing eyes sparkling with tears, her mouth open in a drawn out gaps of incredulity.

"Watch out, now!" warned Cid, holding the girl's head steady, as it began to twitch, "She's coming round."

The girl's eyes fluttered open, bright blue as ever.

"Kairi?" Selphie prompted from Celeste's side, "Kairi, are you okay?"

But the girl only had eyes for Amphitrite kneeling over her, shaking like a leaf, fresh tears beginning to trickle down her wrinkled face as she took one of her small, smooth hands in hers, "Namine?"

And, though her face was drawn over in fear and exhaustion, the girl's eyes lit up as she answered, in Kairi's voice, "Mother?"

* * *

 **A/N:** You guys don't know how long those last few paragraphs were bouncing around in my head. For those of you wondering about where Radiant Creatures is going now that we've been introduced to _X-_ Corp, soul-swapping, soul _sharing_ , trick pacemakers and the lot, here's my regular promise that it all comes together in the end.

We're about halfway into the narrative at this point, even if there aren't explicitly twenty chapters after this. There _might_ be...might not. Outlining is still a little sketchy on that.

In terms of the next update, I'm going to be taking a few weeks off to _finish_ outlining and map out the rest of the story by specific beats instead of broad strokes. I can't give a specific date on when Chapter 22 will be ready, but it will be at least four weeks on from now. Expect a Friday, in any case.

Thanks again for sticking with me, hope you guys enjoy what's come, and look forward to what's coming!


	22. Vigil Watchers

Chapter 22, Vigil Watchers

 **A/N:** And welcome back! I did promise a four week minimum, and so here we are. I hope the update, and those that are forthcoming, prove worth the wait. This chapter picks up shortly after the last one ended. Those who have been closely following the timeline will recognize that it is now Tuesday night in Radiant County, a week and a day since the story began.

Enjoy!

* * *

" _We go live now to a rare press appearance by the CEO and President of Asphodel Industries, regarding the collapse of a corporate refinery north of Traverse Sunday..._ "

" _That's_ Hades?" Celeste cocked an eyebrow at the sallow-faced, reptilian figure standing at the press podium, grinning toothily at the just out-of-frame reporters in the crowd, "I always thought he'd be...bigger."

"You think a lot about faceless corporate magnates?" asked Aerith with a soft smile.

Celeste rolled her eyes with a goodnatured smile, " _No_ , but..." she shrugged, "Still, it's surprising."

"That's the kinda goon you stay well clear of," said Cid, nodding up to the T.V mounted in the corner of the waiting room, "They say he's got a finger in every pie, so to speak. And you can bet he don't wash his hands between pies."

Aerith laughed, but it was the kind of patient, very _Aerith_ laugh, that was largely meant as a gesture of politesse. Celeste would've given Cid a similar expression, but she figured he knew her well enough to know it was fake.

"You know, once upon a time, Asspedel..."

" _Asphodel,_ " corrected Aerith, "The P.H is an _f_ , like phobia."

"Not all of us are smothered in college debt, Princess. I'm fine with regular debt," he crossed his arms, "Well, anyway, once upon a time, that Hades tried to get his hooks in my place."

"Really?" asked Celeste.

"Oh, before you came along. I was just starting out, getting some good business. Some slimy kid in a suit slinks on into the place, says they'd be interested in buying, opening a _chain_..." he spat on the floor, which Celeste was certain would add a great deal to the sterile hospital atmosphere.

"You said no?" asked Aerith.

"I said a coupla things, and the squirt got the message before too long. I'm fine making my own way, thank you very much. 'Sides, you don't want to get too tied down with those people."

"Why not?"

This time, both Celeste and Cid eyed her curiously, "Really, Princess? You don't know?"

"Well, don't make me feel _stupid_..."

"It's an open secret Hades's corporation is really just a front," explained Celeste, "For the Styx and Stones," she hesitated, "Gangsters."

"You're kidding?"

"You're cute," Cid scoffed, "Eh, Princess, if you weren't so sharp, I'd swear you were born yesterday."

"Thanks," Aerith crossed her legs with a sigh, looking around the room, "I'll be right back. Tiana's got breath mints in her bag, and I'm getting restless."

"Ah, the kids..." Cid sighed, watching as she went.

Celeste looked at him, "Not just the kids. Couple of days ago, the Styx and Stones were just some shadowy boogeyman for me. I never _thought_ about them."

"What, you're thinking now?"

Celeste thought of Jane Porter, leaning over to her across the debris strewn floor of the DPD, beseeching in urgent tones that, more likely than not, her son had gotten dragged down to the Underworld.

Not wanting to regale Cid with any of that right now, however, she merely shrugged and said, "It's just...there's been a lot, hasn't there?"

Cid gestured around the hospital, "Case in point."

Celeste leaned forward in her chair, craning her neck to spot who she might through the frosted glass panels lining the room and looking out into the hallway.

"Poor Amphitrite," she said softly.

"Poor? Way I see it, she's got more than she bargained for and _then_ some."

Celeste gave him a look, "It's not a joke, Cid."

"Did I say it was?" he shrugged, "Old lady got her kid back, didn't she? That's...that's some real New Testament shit. Maybe I should get back to praying, my poor sod brother might come tripping into the meat freezer one day."

"You don't think that's her _daughter_ , do you?" Celeste asked.

"Well, she sure ain't the _granddaughter_."

"Kairi's been raised by Amphitrite since she was a baby," said Celeste, "I don't know why, I guess I never thought much about what happened to her parents."

It was haunting, really, how time had seemed to slow down as the silvery figure of that tiny girl appeared at the end of the field, crossed to them and, suddenly, went limp, like some puppet with cut strings.

"She looks _so_ much like Kairi," Celeste added, "But...but at the same time she doesn't. And obviously, she's too _young_ to be anybody's mother..."

"Well, I suppose if we're talking semantics..."

Celeste gave him a look, "I know very well how young a mother can be, Cid. I mean she's too young to be a mother to someone _her own_ age."

Cid shrugged, "Well, it's a fishy situation. I don't like it."

Celeste sighed, reaching over to where she'd looped her bag over the back of the chair. Rifling through it, her fingers closed around a sheet of thin paper. She felt her mouth set into a thin line. She'd nearly forgotten.

"Hot Joe on call _oooh_!"

Celeste barely had time to react as Milo entered the room, tripping over some irregularity in the ground only _he_ could detect, the paper coffee cups in his hand splashing every which way.

"Jesus, kid!" Cid swore, getting to his feet, swatting madly at a spreading stain on his pants leg, "I get enough hot garbage spilled on me at work."

"S-sorry," Milo stammered, still holding the foam tray, its one remaining cup dangling listlessly over the side, "So stupid of me, I...mind was wandering."

"And the rest of ya too, it looks like," Cid groused, "Lemme go clean up. Scream if you need me."

And off he went. Celeste could hear him loudly complaining to some passing nurses as he went down the hall.

"Don't mind him," Celeste told Milo, "Let me help you clean that up."

"Oh, I'm sure you mop up enough messes as it is, I'll handle..." he began furiously wiping at the spilled coffee with the hem of his jacket.

"I insist," she said kindly, going to retrieve some sanitary wipes from the dispenser on the wall.

She got down on her knees beside him and got to work, smiling wryly, "I count three coffee cups."

"Four," said Milo, "That one rolled under the vending machine there."

Celeste looked where he nodded, sighing, "You were going to treat us?"

"Well, Quistis couldn't wait any longer, and we carpooled over here..." he paused, adding, "She has a cat to feed."

"So do I," Celeste chuckled, "I'm still here."

"Well, you're more involved," he shrugged, "Well, anyway, the coffee was supposed to be for myself, Quistis...Principal Skellington's already inhaled three cups, it's beginning to become alarming..."

"And the last one?" Celeste asked.

Milo reddened, "Oh, well..."

"You just missed Aerith."

Milo began sputtering incoherently, which was all the proof Celeste needed, "For what it's worth, I think you'd make a very handsome couple."

"Handsome?"

"Well... _nice_ ," Celeste collected the used up wipes, carrying them to a nearby wastebasket and tossing them out, "She could benefit from a social life."

"Oh, I'm afraid I don't provide much in the way of a _social_ life..."

"You? Up until a week ago I was a waitress by day and a mother by night. My first touch of night life in years was when we ran into each other at the..."

She went to pick up her bag, but the strap had gotten caught on the chair. With a gasp, Celeste reached wildly as her makeup bag, reading glasses, a rolled up magazine she'd started reading in August and never gotten to finish all came cascading to the still drenched floor, followed by...

"No!" she moaned, as the letter went fluttering down to rest in the puddle.

Celeste went to pick it up before it got too wet, looking at the unevenly damp paper, the ink already beginning to run.

"I'm sorry!" Milo blurted, "Oh, I've lost enough lesson plans that way. I really am just..."

"It's alright," Celeste told him, "My fault for just leaving this thing in my bag."

She leaned back in her chair, spreading the letter out in her lap. Aware of Milo's eyes on her, she explained, "It's...um...it was left for me yesterday, at work. I...I think it has to do with Sora."

Milo paled, "You mean...you mean from his kidnappers?"

"That's what Amphitrite thinks."

Milo got very quiet, blinking vacantly, "...I destroyed _evidence_. Oh Celeste, I'm...I'm very sorry, I should've been more careful..."

"Well, it doesn't matter very much," Celeste assured him, "I can't read it anyway."

"Sorry?"

"Well, it's written in some kind of code. It's...it's no language _I've_ ever seen at..."

Milo snatched the letter from her lap with a new energy, "Great Scott!"

" _What?_ "

"Sorry, shouldn't have grabbed, very rude of me, but..."

"But Great Scott, yes, I know," Celeste nodded, "What is it? Do you recognize the language?"

"Recognize it?" Milo's face had lit up like a kid's, "I _invented_ it! This...see, this is a mixture of Arabic, Sabean script specifically, interspersed with letters from the Greek alphabet. I called it Neo-Atlantean."

"Neo-Atlantean?"

"A little joke between my best friend and I when we were kids," his glasses were jostling around on the bridge of his nose, he was so excited, "Because Plato wrote about Atlantis first, but if it _really_ existed, it would have probably been closer to the Levant than the Hellenic city states..."

Celeste lifted a hand to stop him, "So, you and your friend are the only people who know how to read this?"

"Yes," Milo nodded, "the script's a bit off in some places, but that may just be the ink running. And it's not like we still communicate this way, she might be rust..." his expression changed, "Oh my God... _Jane_."

"Jane?" prompted Celeste.

"My...my friend. Actually, she was the one I was supposed to meet at the Dalman Club on Saturday, when we bumped into each other. I called her office, they said she was sick, but I couldn't _not_ go, I'd already made reservations..."

"Milo!" Celeste interrupted him, urgently, "Who's Jane?"

Milo blinked at her, "Jane Porter. DTV News."

Celeste leaned back, lifting one hand to her mouth as a sudden realization came to her, "The _reporter_?"

"She came by the school Friday, we talked. That's...that's when we made plans."

"Friday," Celeste echoed, "That's the same day I saw her."

Milo started, "You...you _know_ her?"

"We met that day, in the police station. I was there because of Sora, and..." she trailed off, looking at the TV, where the smarmy figure of Hades had just given another unctuous grin to the press and turned to leave the podium

"Oh my God," she and Milo said, in the same breath.

* * *

Riku wished he could say he didn't know what he'd done to deserve this treatment, but he knew he'd done enough to warrant all this and probably more. And that wasn't even _starting_ on the other two guys sharing space in his head or...wherever they were.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed since Sora had been dragged off and away again. Things had seemed to move by really slowly after that. Sometimes Riku told himself it hadn't really happened, just a hallucination like all the rest.

But he had _felt_ Sora there, on his lips. Briefly, sure. But _there_. And there was no way he could be imagining it, could he?

 _Oh, it was real_ , growled his new familiar.

 _What would you know about that?_ Riku thought back in response, _You're in my head._

 _My fantasies are_ wildly _different from yours, boy, make no mistake._

Riku considered that, "Gross."

 _Don't be crude. This is as inconvenient for me as it is for you. I_ did _have to endure your entire adolescence_

"Jesus."

 _Neither of us much_ asked _for this, I'll have you know. Some self-awareness on your part would be much appreciated_.

"I'll get right on it," muttered Riku, "Once I'm sure which _self_ I'm aware of."

His limbs were still tied down, the slab he was spread out on tilted so he faced the door. Not that that meant anything, given this entire room was scrubbed clean of anything that passed for visually inspiring.

"What's the music for?" he asked.

 _You presume I know the answer._

"You're the one who _dragged_ me here."

 _I_ brought _us here._

Riku rolled his eyes, looking up at the PA speaker inset in the ceiling. Some woman he'd never heard before was singing something sad and doleful.

" _Isn't it rich?/Are we a pair?/Me here at last on the ground...you in midair?Where are the clowns?_ "

"Good question."

" _Isn't it bliss?/Don't you approve?/One who keeps tearing around...one who can't move/Where are the clowns? There ought to be..._ "

"Imbecile!" boomed a stentorian voice from somewhere down the hall, "I gave you one task..."

"You gave me a glorified sanatorium!" screeched the by now all too familiar voice of Vexen, the resident medical professional, from what Riku had gathered, "And two antisocial gorillas to help me watch it..."

"I gave you everything you asked for and more than you all by all rights deserved," the shuffle of footsteps paused. Riku saw a shadow under the door. They were right outside.

"I _saved_ this project," Vexen hissed, "You can swan around all you like, but I am _owed_ due credit. In a civilized society, that would mean some respect as well..."

"You want credit?" the voice wasn't any softer or louder, but it had a colder, stiller, _crueler_ quality to it now, "Very well, then. If this all blows up, trust that it will be _your_ head on a pike," a short pause, "Go. Make yourself useful."

One set of footsteps went pattering on by and away.

 _At last_ , said the Voice. Riku didn't have time to ask for the edification he knew he wouldn't get anyway before the door opened.

The man standing in the doorway was built like a statue. He was tall, not especially broad, but with square shoulders that made him look very sturdy. He wore a sharp black suit that seemed tailored to his body, sleek and impeccably fitted.

But, more than his spotless, wolfish teeth shining through thinly parted lips, more than his stark silver hair, cascading in an uncombed tangle down his back, it was his _eyes_ that Riku noticed most. Amber, the color of dark liquor, or honey...or a bird of prey.

"Riku," he pronounced the name with a steady purr, "That's who I'm speaking to, isn't it?"

" _Don't you love farce?/My fault, I fear/Losing my timing this late in my career/But where are the clowns?/There ought to be clowns.../Maybe next..._ "

The music was silenced. Riku's visitor moved his hand from a barely visible switch in the wall.

"Vexen, my Head of Research, is allegedly one of the foremost thinkers in biological engineering, he has received four different commendations for his work in the field of neurology, _and_ he was once in the running for the Nobel. And yet his fondness for showtunes works a long way at canceling the rest of that out, doesn't it?"

He took a few steps closer. Riku could feel something scratching in his head. Not a _physical_ sensation, but a sort of psychic pushing. He decided he wasn't going to give his friend what he wanted. Not again.

"Who are you?"

"Not one for small talk, are we?"

"I've had more than enough bullshit the last few days, yeah."

He nodded appreciatively, "Then I'll satisfy you. I am Xemnas, owner of this facility..."

"CEO of _X_ -Corp?" Riku prompted, "Maleficent's old business rival?"

"Is that how she described me?"

"I had to work pretty hard to get _that_ far."

Xemnas chuckled, "I wouldn't say Maleficent and I are in _business_. We've spent the better part of my lifetime avoiding breathing each others' air."

"You're the ones who kidnapped Kairi," said Riku, "And the rest. She told me how you handled Jasmine Ahmed for her."

"This sounds unusually forthcoming for the old woman," Xemnas said smoothly, "She must see something special in you."

"You have no idea."

Xemnas wasn't smiling, but his eyes seemed almost to laugh at Riku as he moved slowly around the table Riku was strapped to.

"I think you'd be surprised how much I _do_ know..."

The scratching at Riku's temples were growing unbearable. He gritted his teeth, trying not to betray what he was feeling, not to give Xemnas the satisfaction.

"It hurts," Xemnas purred again, moving one hand to Riku's forehead, stroking it with one finger, "Doesn't it?"

Somehow, Riku felt himself folding beneath even this little touch. A warm, heavy _softness_ weighed down on him. He felt his eyes roll back into his head, his breath catch in his lungs. His mind seemed empty, or else so clouded up that there might as well have been nothing there at all.

"Do you hear one man's voice?" Xemnas asked, as if from miles away, "Or two? Vexen couldn't give me any answers."

Riku tried to force the answer down, but somehow he couldn't, the word stumbling over his lips, "O-one. One voice."

"Indeed. I'm sure he wants very much to speak to me."

"Yeah, well..." Riku opened his eyes, "It's not his choice."

Xemnas shook his head, "You're a stubborn one. That's no surprise, considering. No matter..."

He crossed to a trolley in the corner, collecting a thin, clear cylinder, tipped with a needle...a syringe. Riku tensed as Xemnas crossed over to him.

"Fighting is an admirable effort, but Riku, you must realize that...for one thing, I am not made of time. And for another...there is nothing to be gained from fighting the _self_."

He stuck the syringe into Riku's arm. He could see the vein Xemnas had chosen swell, contort, bright violet against his skin.

Everything turned red, bright, _violent_. Every burst of rage Riku had felt his entire life might as well have been thrown together in one furious moment. He seized up on the table, let out a wordless cry. Everything was hot, there were little _things_ crawling over his skin, his hair standing on end.

Those hawkish eyes hovered over him, the most distinct things in the wild mess of red anger that the world had become.

"Adrenaline," Xemnas's voice seemed to come from all around him, "Accelerates the body's functions, triggers the animal impulse to fight. Awakens the subconscious, the primal. Let go, Riku. There is absolutely _nothing_ you stand to lose, and even less that you can hope to accomplish."

"What..." Riku heard himself say, "What are you..."

He seized on the table, clenching his fists, feeling a thousand knives cut into his palm, hearing the crack of Maleficent's neck in his fingers, clear as if it was happening all over again, the roar of Betty's engine, Sora's face as he left him in that shack, his cries as he was hauled away right in front of him.

Words choked their way up his throat. He found himself speaking them in a guttural, nearly bestial tone he barely recognized.

" _Made quite a name for yourself, haven't you, boy_?"

The amber eyes lit up above him, a satisfied voice answering, "You sound surprised."

" _Disappointed_ ," the voice took on a sardonic rasp, sounding so _alien_ on Riku's tongue, " _Call me deluded, but I expected my vision to amount to more than a prison camp for vagrant urch..._ "

The scream that had been building up in Riku's chest exploded from him, the red ebbing out, giving way to lifeless white walls, the flat ceiling above, and Xemnas still standing above him, that invisible, yet piercing smile on his face.

His breath was quick and ragged. He could feel cold sweat on his face, his shirt sticking to his skin. His hands were burning, sticky with blood...he'd cut into his palms, his fists had been closed so tightly.

Vividly, he recalled the bloodstains on his hands. Pete's blood he thought, maybe...he couldn't be sure. He couldn't be sure of anything anymore.

"You..." it was almost a whimper, and he hated himself for only managing that, "...you..."

"Back already?" Xemnas sounded mildly disappointed, "I'd have used a stronger dose, but you're no good to me dead. _None_ of you."

"You...you're..."

"It is something, isn't it?" Xemnas reached forward, took a strand of Riku's hair between two fingers, "Our...little physical similarities. I'm surprised Maleficent didn't go to more effort to hide them..." he sighed, "Still, we do look a great alike, don't we? Not at all surprising. We do indeed share a father," he considered, "In a matter of speaking."

"The Voice..."

"You know who he is."

"Xehanort," the name sounded more natural when Riku tried it now, "He's your father?"

"And you are him. And we have a great deal to discuss."

With a curt nod, as if in approval, Xemnas backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. Riku remained there, bound, feeling the blood on his hands drip down to the floor.

He waited for the Voice, for Xehanort, to chime in, say something, some retort, some slimy comment. But nothing came.

Everything was quiet, but for the dripping of the blood, red on white, spreading steadily, Riku helpless to do anything about it.

* * *

"I'm really hungry, but I also wanna puke," Zack turned to her, frowning, "Is that normal?"

"Probably not," Selphie replied, "But neither is resurrection, and here we are."

"Dude, you play football for four months out of the year," said Tidus, "You should be used to the feeling by now."

"Yeah, but that's, like... _football_. This is different."

"You're not wrong," muttered Selphie, looking up and down the hallway, "You'd think we'd have been told something by now."

"Why?" asked Tidus, "It's not like we're family."

" _I_ am Kairi's best friend."

"So it _is_ Kairi?".

"No, Zack," said Tidus, "It's Kairi's Mom, miraculously turned into a teenager and raised from the grave. Not in that order, maybe."

"Well, what if it _is_? I mean..." he shifted around in his seat, "Weirder shit's happened, right?"

Selphie shrugged, "I think I'm pretty good with Sora's Mom since we got smashed together..."

Zack made one of those precious gawpy faces of his as Selphie finished, "...maybe I'll ask her about his Dad so we can get prepared for _him_ to suddenly turn up, edging 17."

"Sora's _18_."

"Fleetwood Mac," Selphie looked from one bonehead to the other, sighing, "I'll be right back. You boys play nice."

Tidus made some wordless noise of assent, which was all Selphie needed as she straightened up and went on her way.

A voice screeched to life over the P.A system, echoing up and down the hallway, " _Dr. Facilier to Radiology. Dr. Facilier to radiology._ "

That was a good thing, maybe? At least that indicated they weren't pulling any kind of plug, literal or otherwise. Maybe they were all that closer to figuring out what was _wrong_ with Kairi in the first place.

Something _had_ to be wrong. Unless it really wasn't Kairi. If, somehow, she really was...

A blast of cool evening air hit Selphie in the face as she stepped out into the parking lot. She could just glimpse the last purples and oranges of the sunset disappearing over the hills to the west. It didn't feel like they'd all been in the hospital for as long as all that. Which was weird, because usually waiting for something to happen for what felt like forever _dragged_ on and on.

She sighed, looking around at all the cars still in park. She knew they weren't all here from Destiny High, obviously, but it _did_ feel like half the town had packed up from the football field just to come over here.

 _Kairi's fans...please. They just need something to gawp at._

Not that there was much cause for gawping, really, once you got over the initial way-out-of-left-field shock of it all.

" _Once I had a secret love,_ " came a soft, smooth voice, from somewhere in the maze of parked cars, " _That lived within the heart of me... All too soon my secret love became impatient to be free..._ "

Selphie lifted herself from the column she was leaning against, and started off deeper into the lot, tracking the voice.

" _So I told a friendly star/The way that dreamers often do/Just how wonderful you are... And why I'm so in love with you..._ "

A faint smell of flowers reached Selphie's nose. She recognized at once, despite limited exposure earlier. She supposed anybody might recognize it, or else she was just really agenda driven, which was likely more helpful than she had ever given it any credit for.

" _Now I shout it from the highest hill/Even told the golden daffodils... At last my heart's an open door, and my secret love's_..."

"No secret anymore?" Selphie finished, rounding a lopsided Winnebago on which somebody had crudely stenciled the words ' _LEFT MY HEART ON BRIAR HILL_ '.

Aerith turned as if surprised, hastily zipping up her light jacket the rest of the way, as if she were naked underneath it, rather than wearing that tragic waitress uniform.

But maybe nudity would be preferred to such circumstances, Selphie couldn't judge. Or she would, but there were bigger (and crustier) fish to fry.

"It's rude to just sneak up on people, you know," prompted Aerith, though she was smiling. Selphie got the impression she could never be _truly_ angry.

That must be terrible.

"Oh?" Selphie cocked her head coquettishly, "Just that in _my_ experience, a lady doesn't start singing in a public place if she doesn't want some attention."

"One singer to another?" Aerith chuckled, "You were very good. At the assembly."

"Before I was rudely interrupted, you mean?" Selphie crossed her arms, "Thanks."

"Have you been singing long?"

"Honey, I was _born_ singing," Selphie shrugged, smirking, "Not my fault all _they_ heard was hysterical weeping."

"It's a good talent to have," said Aerith, "You're never truly alone if you have your voice with you."

"That's nice," Selphie nodded, "I mean...it's true too. I think. I don't like being alone."

"Is that why you're wandering around this parking lot?"

Selphie frowned, feeling caught, "Well, sometimes people are a lot to deal with, you know? Wait, you're a waitress, of course you know..."

Aerith laughed, "There's nothing wrong with feeling overwhelmed sometimes. I think that might be my natural state, it's hard to shake it."

Selphie didn't exactly appreciate this obvious attempt to render her vulnerable. That was supposed to be _her_ job.

"Is that why _you're_ out here?" asked Selphie, "Trying to get away from all the chaos?"

Aerith considered, "It's...it's really not much of my business. I can't imagine what you must be feeling, your friend coming back like that..."

"My friend," Selphie said softly, "Kairi's been gone almost a whole week. I keep imagining all the different ways she might turn up again. Stumbling into what was basically her memorial service with a whole new hairdo never seemed like her style. More like something _I_ would do."

"She must've wanted to come back," said Aerith, "It's odd, really. Everyone in town, almost, all together in that place, thinking about Kairi and...and Sora," she sighed, "It's almost like she heard a prayer, and had to answer it."

"Eh, I don't know if I believe in prayers."

"No?"

"My Mom's a Buddhist during the week and a freak on Saturday nights, I don't exactly have a glowing experience with the Spirit Realm."

Aerith was quiet for a while before saying,"I believe in prayer,"

"That's great for you."

"But I also believe you have to work to have them answered."

"Very convenient."

Aerith didn't seem to hear that part, "It's hard, sometimes, just _believing_ in something."

Selphie considered, "Like your secret love?"

"What?" Aerith looked at her, unable to hide her surprise.

 _Got her, Selph. You could make a career out of this stuff._

All she needed to do was cut out whatever remained of her capacity to feel shame. At this point, how hard could that be?

"Your...um...your boyfriend?" she prompted, "Zack said you used to date his brother."

Aerith blinked, nodding slowly, "I...I almost forgot. You guys were at Cid's a few days ago."

"I never even knew Zack _had_ a brother."

"Zack doesn't talk about him?" Aerith frowned, "That's...that's a shame. They were...well, they weren't _close_ , but then... Cloud was a hard person to get close to."

"I bet."

"What?"

"Nothing," Selphie smiled sweetly.

"I remember, Zack would always follow him around. He _worshiped_ him. Cloud, he wasn't _popular_ , but I didn't need him..." she cleared her throat, " _I_ didn't need him to be. I don't think Zack did either. He was just...effortlessly himself."

 _Jesus_ , Selphie thought, resisting the impulse to retch at the acute levels her blood sugar was reaching about now.

"Zack makes it sound like he was very private," said Selphie.

Aerith shrugged, "He was. And very protective."

"Is that why he left?"

Aerith narrowed her eyes, "What are you to Zack? His...girl..."

"We're friends. I'm just..." she hesitated, "He's been thinking a lot about Cloud lately. I thought I might be able to help."

"Which is why you tracked me down here, so you could quiz me..."

"Well, I wasn't _looking_ for you..."

"I'm sorry for Zack," Aerith spoke over Selphie, in a harder tone than she'd used yet, "I can't imagine how hard it must be to not have his brother after all these years. But Cloud left for his own reasons, and..."

"And that makes it okay that he left? You were never even a _teensy_ weensy bit upset about it?"

"I don't see how that's any of your..."

"Word of advice, Flower Girl," Selphie took half a second to be impressed with her own boldness, but she was honestly getting pretty fed up, "Self respect begins from within. For the life of me I can't imagine _any_ reason to still be hung up on some guy that strolled off into the night with no word of warning and never came back, brother _or_ girlfriend..."

"Then you don't have a very good imagination," Aerith shrugged, "And I'm sorry for that. But it _is_ none of your business."

"You'd be surprised," Selphie turned and started back across the lot, "Thanks for the chat."

 _Well, that was a great heap of useless_ , she thought to herself, passing back through the hospital doors, _Either she's just as hopeless as she seems, or she just won't tell you anything_.

It was sad really, the devotion Cloud's loved ones had to him. Selphie could understand Zack, at least. Of course he would always give his brother the benefit of a doubt. But Aerith, being so hung-up on a guy that had left her high and dry half a decade ago...

It was sad. Selphie wasn't about to excuse it or explain it away. It was sad, pathetic. Cloud couldn't be _that_ great, could he? Sure, he was good looking, despite his many, many _many_ scars, and sure there was a certain sex appeal in a mystery man...

 _Maybe he was a different person before he left. That happens, just look at Kairi. Aerith may be pining after some guy who doesn't even exist_.

How Gothic. Didn't make it any less pathetic, in Selphie's estimation. She couldn't imagine doing the same thing in her position.

"Where's Tidus?" she asked, approaching the spot where she'd left her two boykins.

Zack looked up from his gym bag, "Said he had to stress his legs," he shrugged, "But, if I'm being honest, I think he wanted to put some space between him and me."

"What happened _this_ time?" Selphie asked, sinking back into her chair.

"Oh...um, well nothing _new_ ," he cleared his throat, "It's just been...yanno, rough since..."

"Since our mutual friend moved in," Selphie finished for him, sighing, "Is that what that fight was about?"

Zack sighed, "Tidus tried to convince me to go to the cops about it."

"Why am I not surprised?"

"And I guess I can't blame him, but...but he made it sound like it was _my_ fault. Like...like I'd _asked_ for this."

"Answer to your prayers, huh?" Selphie cocked an eyebrow.

Zack looked at her, confused, "I mean...I guess. Funny how that went, right?"

Selphie nodded, "Do you think he knew that? When he decided to crash with you, I mean? That you would never give him up?"

"Well, I _am_ his brother..."

"And he knows that."

"You mean, like...if he decided to come to me because he knew I'd do whatever he needed?"

Selphie nodded and Zack sighed, "I wanna say there's no way he'd do that. But, then I think back to when I was a kid, how much has happened..." he looked back at her, his eyes sparkling, "I don't know my brother. Not anymore. Or maybe I never knew him at all."

"Hey," Selphie put her hand over his, "I didn't mean to upset you."

"You're not," he shook his head, cheeks reddening, "Promise. I...I'm just sorry you and Tidus are part of this."

"Well, I'm not."

"Seriously?"

Selphie grinned, "You may have heard, but I'm a _whore_ for drama. And...you shouldn't have to go this thing alone."

Zack smiled at her, blinking rapidly, "Thanks, Selph. I just...I have to figure out what to do."

"That would be a good place to start."

"I've decided, I'm gonna ask him. About everything, what he was doing what happened to him...why he finally came back."

He bent down, going for his gym bag, "And why he was packing up to go again."

Selphie blinked, "I'm...I'm sorry, _what_?"

Zack lowered the bag back into his lap, "Today, before I headed out for the assembly. I found this,"

He reached into the bag, retrieved a threadbare, familiar red scarf, all rolled up, "I think he was packing up, maybe...maybe he didn't realize it was _my_ bag."

"Did you tell him?"

Zack shook his head, "I mean...I wasn't supposed to _find_ it, was I? If I told him..."

"He'd just lie," Selphie finished, "It's what I would do," she considered, "Maybe it was a mistake. Like, he just dropped it."

"In my bag? Why? Unless he wanted me to..."

His grip on the scarf slackened and it unfurled, a tiny silver trinket falling from the fold and clattering to the linoleum floor.

Selphie and Zack looked at each other, then at the thin chain on the floor, the tiny tag hanging at the end of it...

Wordlessly, Selphie picked it up and held it up to the light, feeling her blood go cold immediately, "Oh my God."

"What?" asked Zack, "What, Selphie, what is..."

"The dog tag, it's..." she turned it to Zack so he could see it, "It's Sora's."

* * *

The door opened almost soundlessly, which only made the giant, stone-like figure standing in the doorway even more unnerving than he was already.

"On your feet," said Xaldin shortly, "I'm in no mood for more angst."

Sora eyed him from his cot, "I don't have any _angst_."

"Nor am I in any mood to be your therapist. On your feet, or I can make this unpleasant."

Having already had the pleasure of being dragged bodily by Xaldin, Sora got to his feet and stepped beside Xaldin and into the hallway.

The place was just as desolate as it had been earlier. Any hopes of making a break for freedom were dashed at once by the uniformity of all the doors, and the fact that, well...Xaldin was pretty big and, unlike his nutty scientist cohort, probably would do more than bluster like a moron if he tried anything.

"Where's Riku?" asked Sora as Xaldin closed the door behind him and started off down the hall, "What have you..." he swallowed, thinking of the crude operating table he'd been strapped too, "What _are_ you doing to him?"

"I thought we established you have no feelings for the boy."

"I don't! What does that have to do with anything?"

"Only that if I were you, I'd be more interested in what was to become of _me_."

Sora rolled his eyes, "I am, but you're not going to tell me."

"Nor would I tell you anything about Riku." Xaldin stopped at the end of the hall, pressing a neatly concealed button in the wall, that revealed a secret elevator more compact and tomb-like than the one Axel had ditched him in.

Sora wondered, again, what had happened to Axel. Presumably he'd gotten away. Vexen would probably have paid him a visit to gloat about catching him if he had. He seemed like the type.

Maybe Axel would be able to help them from outside this place, Sora and Riku and...whatever other friend he claimed was locked up here too.

Suddenly inspired, Sora asked, "What if I ask a question that _isn't_ about Riku and me?"

Xaldin spared him barely a glance as the elevator began to go the only direction it was built to go (there were no buttons): down.

So Sora asked anyway, "Who else?"

"I'm sure there are worse times to veer into existentialism, boy, but keep the musings to yourself."

"Who else are you keeping here?" Sora asked in a louder voice, as if that would make Xaldin more likely to answer him, "Not like there haven't been people going missing all over the place lately."

"If you want to know about others, I can tell you yes. There are others."

"You got them tied up to death machines to?"

Xaldin scoffed, "You have no idea what's going on here. You can at least stop pretending."

"I know I'm the key to everything."

Xaldin cocked an eyebrow, "Are you, now?"

Sora wondered if he was putting Vexen's intern in any kind of hot water here. Not that Sora had any reason to think the guy was any better than anyone else in this place, but he had at least _played_ at being helpful.

"You're an accident, boy. Charitably, a happy one."

"That's what I thought for a while, but my Mom claims different," Sora said cheekily, though it didn't seem to piss off Xaldin nearly to the extent he'd hoped. Oh well. Maybe it was for the best.

"You should consider yourself lucky. I nearly had you dead in that ditch off the train tracks."

"So...if you _had_ killed me, I guess your boss would've been pretty upset? Me being such a big important accident, and all?"

"Why should he be upset? He never would have known."

"Oh," Sora nodded, "Right."

The elevator came to a shaky stop, the doors sliding open to reveal a frigid, cement circle, ringed with heavy iron doors. Wordlessly, Xaldin kept on, his boots echoing distinctly in the otherwise silent space. Sora had no choice but to follow, a new unease settling on him.

"What now? Was the old dungeon too cozy?"

"Something like that," Xaldin circled the doors, stopping at one and pivoting in a single fluid motion to face Sora, "We can't have you wandering about the place, can we?"

"Wandering, I went into _one_ room..."

"One room too many."

"You had him _tied up_!" Sora's own words sounded deep, rich, desperate, rebounding back to him off the walls and ceiling, "Out cold, he looked like hell..."

"Bruises, torn clothes, probably a concussion, yes?" Xaldin made a tiny sound that Sora would have thought was a chuckle if it weren't so humorless, "Which savage monster could have inflicted such injuries?"

"Yeah... _which_?" Sora echoed, not looking away from Xaldin.

"What if I told you that he sustained those injuries after pulling a chandelier from its moorings with bodily force?"

Sora blinked, "Is _that_ what you're trying to sell me?"

"He's not some lamb brought to slaughter. Your sympathies are misplaced."

"Man, you don't wanna _know_ where my sympathies are..."

"No," Xaldin opened the door, "I don't."

Before Sora could say or do anything else, Xaldin had shoved him through. He fell forward, throwing his hands out in front of him to balance his fall, and still coming up hard against a cold steel wall.

Feeling his breath catch, Sora looked over his shoulder, only for the tiny, faint sliver of light from the room outside to be shut out with the thunderous slam of the door, sealing him in darkness.

"Hey!" he cried, moving to the door, slamming on it with his hands, "So that's it? You're just gonna leave me here? Huh? I'm a key, right? Guess what, asshole? _Keys unlock stuff_!"

No answer. Of course not. Sora let out a cry of rage, "Dammit!" punching the door and immediately regretted the decision, pain jolting up his arm.

Biting his lip, he sank to his knees, back against the door, looking at the empty, dark space around him. It was cold down here, cold and empty. Whereas the floor above had been empty in a sterile, shiny, _light_ way, this place was truly empty. Dark, devoid of personality, stimulation.

He might as well have been asleep. Or comatose.

Maybe he was locked down here to be forgotten, gotten out of the way so he could quietly starve to death. He wished he could believe that. Whatever they had planned for him was probably far worse.

And nobody, anywhere, had any idea where he was. _He_ barely knew where he was or why he was here.

"Are you there, God?" he asked, looking in the general direction of the heavens, "It's me, Sora."

"God, huh? Like the sound of that."

Sora screamed, scrambling forward on hands and knees, breathing heavily, eyes wide, "Wha...what the hell? Where are..."

"Cool it, Lockpick, I'm not God. Promise."

"Where..." Sora reached around vaguely with both hands.

"Left wall from the door."

Sora's hand came up against the wall, his finger brushing briefly past a tiny irregularity, maybe a crack or a hole, through which a little draft was blowing, like a clumsy air vent.

"Looks like we're neighbors."

"Are you Axel's friend?" Sora asked.

"Ain't got a lot of friends, and I don't know any Axel," the voice was lazy, disaffected, bored, "I'm just some poor schlub off the street. Same as you."

"What are we doing here? What's their plan, what are they gonna do to..."

"Nothing very nice," there was a short pause, "So...you're the key they keep on talking about? The one true fixer, savior of us all?"

"So they tell me. I don't even know what I'm supposed to fix."

"Sometimes I don't think _they_ know either," a sigh, "You got a name?"

"...Sora. I'm Sora," he put his hand to the wall, wondering if he was looking his neighbor in the eye through the gap in the wall, and trying to imagine what that eye would look like, "You?"

"Nobody. But if you've gotta call me anything, make it Neku."

* * *

 **A/N:** When I say every franchise character is going to be included in _some_ respect, I do mean it...mostly. Pacing wise, this chapter is a bit slower than some others, but the ones to follow will more than make up for it, I hope.

Again, a big thank you to all of you for reading along, whether you jumped on at the beginning, or if you joined some time along the way. Your patience and dedication is _so_ appreciated, and I love knowing my little idea is being read by so many. As ever, any comments or criticisms are more than welcome. I'm not ashamed to say that I _love_ reading what you all think, whatever that might be.

Chapter 23 will be up next Friday, July 6th. See you then!


	23. Puzzled Pieces

**A/N:** Welcome back! Not a whole lot to add for this chapter, except that I had a blast with it, one scene in particular. I get last chapter might've felt too passive after a month long hiatus, so this should hopefully deliver.

We pick up right after the events of last chapter, late Tuesday night. Residents of Destiny are still gathered at the hospital waiting for news on the mystery girl. Meanwhile, in other parts of Radiant County, other parties are trying to find their footing in new and less-than-desirable circumstances...

* * *

The new clothes were ill-fitting, hastily assembled and looked like something a crazy vagrant might be seen sleeping in. Squall was pretty sure that was the idea.

"I feel like an idiot," grumbled Seifer, tugging awkwardly on the grimy tank top.

"Must be a new sensation."

Seifer glared at him, "It is _, actually_ , Leon. What, not even _you_ ever thought I was _stupid_ , did ya?"

"You got suckered in by the least subtle criminal organization this side of the Freemasons, so yeah, I did."

Seifer snorted, "I already told ya, it's not like they gave me much choice. I was stuck, it was either do what they said..."

"Or die?"

Seifer nodded, "What...this when you tell me I oughta have died before I went over to the Dark Side? We both know that woulda done jack, no matter how much _you'd_ have liked to see it. They'd have just found some other patsy biker to do their work for 'em."

"Such a sacrifice. You must be proud."

"Yeah," Seifer looked at him, "Gotta be proud of _something_ , right...partner?"

Squall frowned, "Don't call me that."

"Why not?" Seifer pulled the tank top down enough to expose the _X_ on his chest, "If I've been taking notes, we're practically family."

"Don't take it out on me."

"Who's taken anything on anybody?" Seifer shrugged, "Just telling how I see it. What...you having second thoughts? Cuz, gotta say, I'm gonna be pretty pissed if my insides end up on the outside."

Squall sighed, his hand going to his own scar, beneath the grimy flannel shirt that had no doubt been peeled off a corpse a generation or so ago. He'd tried more than once over the last 24 hours or so to imagine what Luxord's little invention looked like. Maybe some tiny ticker crudely stuck to his heart, a pair of spark plugs clipped to his arteries...

Each imaginary blueprint was more ridiculous than the last, and none of them seemed right. More likely the real death device was tiny, barely visible, like a bit of bacteria, or some tiny, human-dwelling insect. A flea, or a mite. A tic.

Ha.

"Your insides aren't going anywhere," said Squall, "Not if you play along."

"Sounds awful familiar," Seifer smirked lazily, looking up and down the narrow subterranean corridor, "Play along, follow the rules...everything's gonna work out fine. Don't tell me you've started eating your own bullshit, Leon?"

Squall stared, "The Captain needs us alive."

"Just like you and your boys needed _me_ , huh?" Seifer shrugged, "Sure. I get it."

Squall knew he didn't and probably never would. He was past the point of caring. He liked this no more than Seifer did. But they had to do it.

 _You have to do it_.

"Gentlemen," a woman appeared at the end of the corridor, coming up from the shadows, "Got your things together?"

"Can we stop at the front desk before we go?" asked Seifer, "Think my toothbrush's in the Lost and Found."

The woman smiled thinly, surveying them through the tinted lenses of a pair of aviator glasses, "Save the jokes for the sunshine, Almasy. We're not made of time."

She moved between them, continuing down the hall. Seifer gave Squall a look and a shrug as they followed.

"Where are you taking us, exactly?" asked Squall as they went.

"Out." was her only reply.

Squall felt an elbow digging into his side. Grimacing, he turned to Seifer, who in turn nodded with some urgency at their guide...specifically her swaying hips and the admittedly impressive legs supporting them.

Squall glared at Seifer, who shrugged, as if it were his loss.

"You work for Hades?" Squall tried.

"So do you," she replied immediately.

"You got a time bomb in _your_ squishy bits too?" asked Seifer.

She looked over her shoulder at him for a brief second, then faced back in front. Squall noticed the ground beginning to slope up beneath their feet.

"Where does this come out?"

"Someplace private," she explained, "You'll have to find your own way from there."

"Woulda helped if we knew a bit more about these birds we're supposed to be catching," said Seifer, "I'm starting to think your boss _wants_ us to fail."

"Under ordinary circumstances, he might just get a kick out of it, that's true," their guide stopped at a heavy metal door, a switch next to it, which she pulled with minimal effort, "These aren't ordinary circumstances."

With a clanking and groaning, the doors of the impressive freight elevator slid open, and Squall and Seifer followed their guide into it.

"Coliseum cover-up not working as well as he'd like?" Squall asked, "The guys at my office may be a little slow, but we're not _all_ stupid."

The elevator doors closed and they began to rise, Seifer shaking a bit on his feet and grabbing onto the side of the car with an air of determined casualness.

Their guide looked over her glasses at them, offering a glimpse of bright green, catlike eyes that almost seemed to be smiling despite the stern, serious manner of her voice.

"I don't think I have to tell you what will happen to you boys if you say a _word_ about any of this to the gentlemen of the DPD. Or _any_ PD, for that matter."

"Where's Leon supposed to tell 'em he's been, then, huh?" asked Seifer, "Cause I don't feel comfy being led around by _this_ guy's imagination."

Squall didn't look at him, answering, "I'll figure something out. No cops are gonna know what happened down here, except us."

"Cute, Leon, when do I get my honorary badge?"

But Squall wasn't talking to him, instead keeping his eyes on their guide, "You're that woman, aren't you?"

"Depends which _man_ is asking."

"There was a detective on the force a while back, Phoebus. I remember, he was a...living legend. Made more trips in and out of the Underworld than anybody. All with the help of a little guardian angel..."

The woman's bright red lips quirked into something almost resembling a smile.

"You're a cop," Squall finished.

"I'm a concubine and an upjumped cigarette girl, every other c-word you can throw at me I'm ignoring if you're lucky."

"What, you don't work the card tables, too?" Seifer looked from Squall to the woman, "What, Leon, you _know_ this chick?"

"C-word," she said automatically.

"Phoebus used to tell stories, a coupla beers in."

"It's a miracle he didn't drunkenly send a SWAT team to bring me roses."

"You saved his life more times than he could count, helped him bring God knows how many lowlifes to justice..."

"What gives, lady?" asked Seifer, "Leon's a cop too, didn't nobody tell you?"

She didn't dignify him with a look, returning her attention to Squall, "You learn to choose your battles pretty quickly down here. I'm sure I don't have to tell _either_ of you that."

"You've been working with Hades and Luxord for years," said Squall, "Forget the Coliseum, you must know enough to bring them down for less."

"I see what I see and I hear what I hear."

"Talking what you talk's the hardest, I get it," said Seifer, "If you need help loosening the tongue, I know a couple of..."

"I take no pleasure in _any_ of this," she said forcefully, "Just know that I'm more help inside this place than outside it."

"It doesn't have to be that way," Squall told her, "If you went to the police, told them your story, you'd be protected..."

"Leon, _I_ never even feel for that shit," said Seifer.

"I know what I'm doing," she finished as the elevator shuddered to a stop, "I hope for your sake you do too."

The doors opened, revealing a darkened, empty expanse. The three of them started out across a smooth concrete floor, their footsteps echoing in the enormity of the space.

"Shipping warehouse?" asked Squall.

"Must be shipped out," added Seifer, "Looks empty."

"Keen observation," their guide told them, "There's a few sensitive shipping posts Hades clears out when things heat up."

"And exactly _how_ hot did the Coliseum make things?" asked Squall.

"You'll find out. Hades will recover, he always does."

"Says the lifetime mole," muttered Seifer, "You know, my guy Leon over here, he knows a thing or two about moles..."

"I did my job," Squall cut him off, "Reported what I learned."

"Come high hellwater."

"That's...that's not how you..." Squall sighed, looking back at their guide, "You're not a cop, you just helped one out. What do you _get_ out of playing double agent?"

"I ask myself that a lot."

"You have to be doing this for _some_ reason..."

"I am," she turned to Squall, tossing him a keyring, which he caught in one hand, "Same as you."

"Yeah," said Seifer, "there's a psychopath with a magic clock that can kill us whenever he wants."

"That's incentive. But you two wouldn't have been put on this if Hades didn't _really_ believe you had a stake in this."

Squall turned the key over in his hand, "What do you know about Cloud Strife?"

"I know he's young, good at what he does," she smiled, a sad, small smile, "And he has every reason to hate the Angel."

"Angel?" asked Seifer, "This the black bird, or is there someone else?"

"The blackbird," she shrugged, "They call him the Angel."

"Why?"

"Because he's quiet, ghost like. You wouldn't know he was in the same room as you until it was too late, and once you realized, you'd be dead before you could scream. He's a ghost, but 'Ghost' isn't dramatic enough a title, is it?"

"So there's beef between Strife and the Angel?" asked Seifer, "Why?"

She shook her head. Squall sighed, "You can't expect us to believe you don't _know_."

"You don't have to believe it," she jerked her head insistently forward, "Sunup in a couple of hours, you'll want to be well away from here by then."

Squall sighed, holding up the key, "That's what this is for?"

"See for yourself," she indicated the parked car in the middle of the empty warehouse floor.

"No shit?" prompted Seifer, looking the banged up Bentley up and down, "What, you clearing the junk out?"

"Styx and Stones car," said Squall, running his hand down the chipped paint, the cracked headlight, "Pretty banged up. We escaped in a hurry."

"Better scurry," she smirked, "Go on."

Squall unlocked the car, not that Seifer needed any such convenience, lifting himself over the side and dropping into the driver's seat.

"Move over," Squall told him.

"What? Who made you designated driver?"

"I'm the cop."

"And I'm the robber, I steal shit."

But Seifer did seem to get the idea, scooting over and looking none too pleased about it. Squall made to get it behind the wheel, but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

"Forgot something?" he asked her.

"This might be hard to believe," she told him, "But if it's any comfort to you at all...you're doing a good thing. These men you're after..."

"Hardened professional killers. I get it."

"You've never done the right thing for the wrong reasons?"

"Sometimes I think that's all I've ever done."

"Then maybe you can understand," she nodded at the car, "Good luck."

She was halfway across the warehouse before Squall could think of saying anything to her. Sighing, Squall got behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition.

"What a woman."

"Shut up, Seifer."

They started across the concrete floor, toward the already open doors. They passed from the warehouse, across the uneven, cracked parking lot with no trouble. Next to him, Seifer gave a low whoop, turning his head up to feel the cool night breeze on his face.

"Almost forgot what fresh air feels like. Like coming back from the dead, ain't it?"

Squall didn't say anything at first, looking up and down the mostly deserted stretch of highway, "West of Destiny," he decided, "probably just north of Traverse."

"So much for the art of conversation," said Seifer.

"Sorry to disappoint you."

"Well, just that I figure we're gonna be stuck together for a while, and..."

"Wouldn't it be great to play Hearts and Flowers?" Squall shook his head, "No dice, Seifer."

To which Seifer merely shrugged dismissively as they set off down the road, east toward Destiny.

"Look, I get we're not exactly tight, Leon. Believe me, I wish I was anyplace but here, and I probably _wouldn't_ be if you hadn't decided to rope me into your cop bullshit _again_..."

"Maybe if you hadn't started trafficking girls for criminals, I wouldn't have run into you down there."

"I never trafficked nobody..."

"You admitted to being behind the kidnapped women, if you sold them, that's human trafficking..."

"You make it sound like I sold them into slavery, Leon!"

"That's what human trafficking is! You sell people, that's _slavery_..."

"It's not like I sold them to the Styx and Stones, they weren't some _thugs_..."

"Who were they, then?" Squall looked at him, "Honestly. Listen...it's not like I can do anything about it."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Squall sighed, his grip tightening on the steering wheel, "We're supposed to catch two killers on the loose, it's not like I can book you for anything. Probably counts as a tick on Luxord's timepiece."

Seifer sighed, "Sorry."

"What?"

"I...I guess that must feel pretty shitty. Knowing you caught me and can't do anything about it."

"Yes, actually," said Squall, "It _is_ pretty shitty."

There were more cars on the road now. Not many, probably owing to the hour, but enough. Slowly, the highway began to give way to residential streets. Destiny.

"So what's the plan?" asked Seifer, "Not like we got any leads, do we?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"Oh, yeah?"

"There's something we could try. Give us something to go on."

"Well, that's great. What is it?"

Squall didn't answer, taking the car off road and pulling into the adjacent, and appropriate, parking lot. It didn't take Seifer very long to realize where they were, "Wait, what the..."

Squall grabbed him by the tank top and dragged him down to the dashboard, enough to bloody his nose.

"But be bell, Beon?" he demanded through a bloody lip. In response, Leon punched him in the gut, "Hit me."

" _Bis bit bebain_?!"

"Hit me!"

Seifer punched him in the face, but he must've been fairly discombobulated, because Squall was pretty sure he didn't do very much to him. Whatever.

"Come on," he stepped out of the car, dragging Seifer along behind him.

The station was chaos tonight. Phones ringing everywhere, people in and out of uniform running every which way. Even so, people stopped in their tracks as Squall and Seifer passed them. Squall nodded in recognition at a couple of colleagues, all of whom were looking fairly gobsmacked.

"Evening," he greeted the dispatcher, whose mouth was hanging open fairly impressively, "Commissioner's in his office?"

Mutely, the dispatcher nodded, and Squall moved on past him, Seifer in tow.

"Boo bust baid doo bouldn't ding be bin!" Seifer whispered.

"Shut up," Squall replied, even lower.

"No, we have no identification!" Ratcliff was leaning over his desk, bellowing into his phone, "Yes, it's regrettable! She may as well have walked right out of Obliv..." he trailed off, looking up to see Squall and Seifer in the doorway.

The phone came clattering from his hand.

"Hello, Commissioner," Squall greeted him, noting the angry, indistinct yelling over the phone, "Didn't mean to interrupt you and the D.A."

"Detective?" Ratcliff practically wheezed the word, "Oh, _Detective_..."

"I'm sure you've got a lot of questions..."

" _Bestions_?" Seifer demanded in Squall's ear.

"I promise I'll do what I can to answer..."

But before he could finish, Ratcliff let out a moan, slumping against the desk, one arm dangling over the side.

"Bis be bed?" asked Seifer.

"You should be so lucky," replied Squall as Ratcliff stirred a little, "Are you...are you alright, Commissioner..."

To which Ratcliff replied, as if in a dream, "Oh, Detective Leonhart...it's like the end of the world!"

* * *

"Madame," the doctor appeared to have raced his way here from home, he'd only hastily changed into a medical coat, and was still holding a ratty felt top hat, which he doffed at each of them, smiling grandly, "Miss."

Celeste smiled, attempting to look more gracious than she felt. Again she wondered whether Amphitrite would really benefit very much from her being here with her, but if she could afford even a small amount of comfort, Celeste would. It was the least she could do.

"May I see her?" asked Amphitrite faintly. The old woman hadn't been still since they'd all arrived at the hospital, it seemed. From what Celeste had gathered, she'd paced Intensive Care from end to end for a straight hour after they'd arrived, and that was _before_ she'd decided to start hectoring every nurse, orderly and disgruntled patient she'd encountered.

Suddenly, sitting around and shooting the breeze with the gang from Cid's seemed less than productive. But Celeste doubted Amphitrite would've accepted her presence until now.

"The girl is stable," the doctor, Facilier, had a syrupy accent. French, maybe, or Cajun. The tag loosely clipped to his jacket advertised him as ' _Head of Neurology_ ', "There are no...impositions upon her health, nothing volatile. She is dehydrated, but this is easily remedied..."

"You don't mean to say that all she needs is a drink of water!"

Facilier grinned chummily at her, "Patience, Madame. She has been through a great trauma, she is in a state of shock."

" _I'm_ in a state of shock, but I can still tell you my name if you asked!"

"May she see her?" Celeste tried the question this time, "Just...just so they can be together?"

Facilier looked her up and down, his smile never slipping a notch, "You are the daughter?"

"What?" Celeste looked at Amphitrite, "Oh...um...no, I'm just..."

"If I should have a spontaneous stroke, she has the power of attorney," said Amphitrite, "But I can assure you, I am not _that_ delicate, yet."

Facilier opened his mouth as if to say something, but apparently thought better of it, lowering his head in a bow, "Of course. But be advised...she is...fairly out of this world."

"Is that your diagnosis as a doctor or a wizard?"

"She is under the influence of powerful sedatives."

"Sedatives?" Amphitrite raised her eyebrows, "You stuck her with needles?

"To calm her. She entered, how would you say...a panic, when brought to her room. It would seem the sight of our instruments..." he shrugged, "Disturbed her."

"Perhaps she got a good look at that smile," said Amphitrite flatly.

Facilier didn't look particularly offended by this, but Celeste still felt compelled to apologize, "I'm sorry. I'm sure you can imagine how..."

"Of course, Madame," Facilier nodded, "This is by no means a _simple_ situation," he nodded to the door behind him, "You may go in."

Amphitrite nodded and, with a look that Celeste assumed was one of appreciation, moved on into the room. Celeste made to follow, but was stopped by a hand on her shoulder.

"Oh," she stopped, "I...I wouldn't want her to be there alone."

"Nor should she be," Facilier looked up and down the hall before returning his attention to Celeste, "I merely advise you, for the sake of your friend, to keep her from getting her hopes up."

"Is...is her health that bad?"

"It is nothing so simple as health," Facilier explained, "Sickness, this can be treated, it does not hide. Any man with training can see it. Afflictions of the spirit..."

"I'm sorry?"

"There is nothing wrong with the girl. Not physically."

"So...a psychological..."

"Psychology," he scoffed, "Psychology is a riddle. The mind comes apart, we find out why, we stick the pieces back together, we go into the past, we ask questions, we solve it in the end."

"Doctor, I'm afraid I don't..."

"This _girl_ is the riddle. And she comes with precious little clues."

"So she might never..."

"We must see. The body, it is resilient. It fights. If she wants strongly enough to return to the world of the living..." he shrugged, "She will."

And he was gone, slinking silently down the hall and out of Celeste's sight. She sighed, wrapping her arms around herself, suddenly feeling cold.

Turning toward the still open door, Celeste willed herself to enter, though she suspected Facilier's 'helpful' advice had rooted her in place.

Amphitrite didn't look up as she entered, sitting at the bedside, two hands clasped in her lap, mouth closed in a set line. The girl in the bed before her was still and quiet, eyes closed. There was an I.V in her arm, some clear liquid flowing steadily into a receptive vein.

"Good," Amphitrite said softly, "You're here."

"As long as you need me," Celeste told her.

"I worry I might be going mad without...without someone else to tell me what I'm seeing," she hesitated, "I've always worried that, when my mind eventually went, my daughter would come back to replace it, so to speak."

Celeste moved behind the woman's chair, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder, "Well, if you've lost your mind, so have I and about 100 other people. We all saw her on that football field. _I_ see her right now."

Amphitrite nodded, "That is a comfort. And a pain, as well. Such a pain," her tiny, reedy voice cracked, and a tear escaped her eye to go trickling down her cheek, "Because she looks _so_ much like my Namine."

"Kairi took after her," Celeste ventured cautiously.

Amphitrite nodded, "There was none of her father in her. My girl was too strong for that. But not strong enough. I wish I had seen it then, that she could not do everything alone. That she needed help, guidance that I could've given, if only I'd had the eyes to see it..."

Celeste thought again of her own mother, her bloodless, cruel, _proud_ mother and her campaign against her, to take Sora from her arms.

"I think we all wish we'd acted for our children differently," said Celeste, "Those regrets don't mean we were neglectful. _Truly_ bad parents would have no regrets at all."

"No, I suppose they wouldn't," Amphitrite sighed, "Namine would have been a true mother. There was no darkness in her, no weakness. She was a firecracker, wild and smart...independent. She might've taken this whole damned world by the horns, and we would all have been thankful for it."

"She sounds a lot like Kairi."

Amphitrite smiled grudgingly, "Kairi's always been a touch too gentle for her own good. Too forgiving. Or maybe forgiving enough. I'm afraid such temperance was always more my husband's skillset than mine."

They sat together in silence for some time. Celeste thought again of Kairi, Sora...the secret message that Milo was even now trying to make sense of. Could it be that, somewhere, somebody like this...somebody so _like_ Sora, but not quite, was wandering, confused, lost, scared?

"She called me mother."

Celeste looked over at Amphitrite, who was nodding slowly to herself, "I might have dismissed this all as some wild coincidence, some mistake. But she looked at me...she _knew_ me. But I know it can't be her."

She reached out and put a old, wrinkled hand on the girl's thin, pale arm, "Namine's gone. Dead and gone in this damn, cold hospital before her daughter was a week old."

* * *

Axel's combats thudded rhythmically on the cobblestones of the Twilight streets. His feet ached like a bitch, but there was no point stopping now. After all these hours, it would've been tantamount to surrender, if to no other enemy but himself.

"Just down these stairs," he told his kid sidekick, starting down the stone steps to the amphitheater, "If it's not here, it's not anywhere."

"Not anywhere?" Roxas, bless his heart, looked like a ghostly orphan child come to haunt this decrepit place in the darkness, what with his windswept hair and grungy white gown. Axel couldn't begin to imagine how _his_ feet were feeling, but he hadn't been feeling up to robbing a shoe store.

"It's...it's a figure of speech, man."

"What if it's not?"

Axel paused, sighing, "It _is_ a figure of speech, Roxas, promise. I made it."

"No, what if it's not...anywhere?"

He turned to look at him, sighing, "Then we'll figure something else out. It'd help if I knew what the hell happened to Larxene, but..."

He and Roxas had been by the house earlier in the day, about an hour after they'd made it to town. Police tape on the doors, a lonely squad car parked on the corner. He hadn't felt bold enough to try his luck.

"Just our luck, Flower Fancier probably called the cops."

"Why?"

"Why is it our luck or why did he call the cops?" but Axel smiled at him, "Larxene and I kinda roughed him up a little before we left."

"Roughed...?"

"Hurt him," Axel hesitated, "A little. No big deal. Not that he didn't _deserve_ it, he'd just confessed to man-baby snatching, he's lucky I didn't..."

"You didn't? But you said you..."

"I knocked him into a bunch of tacky glass knickknacks, okay?" Axel turned to him, "But...yanno, he was an asshole."

Roxas just stared, still standing on the middle step, "An...an asshole?"

"A crook, a liar, a son of a bitch. A bad guy."

"Bad guy?"

Axel nodded, "Yeah. Yeah, a bad guy."

"And if he was the bad guy, then you're the good..."

"Well, let's not get carried away. I don't much believe in good guys."

"But you believe in bad guys?"

"It's a bad world, brother," Axel laughed darkly, "Or do you think you were put on ice by the Blue Ribbon Brigade?"

"I don't know what that means."

"The Blue Ribbon Brigade? It's a..."

"A figure of speech," Roxas considered, "But I don't know. Who...who they are. Or why I was..."

Axel had been wondering when would be the best time to broach this subject. He supposed there were worse times, and at least it was _Roxas_ bringing it up, so he didn't have to force anything.

"So...you don't remember..."

Roxas shook his head, "Nothing."

Axel considered, "Well...you're doing sentences now. Took me four years to get that far."

Roxas brightened, a tiny, hopeful smile spreading across his face, "Really?"

"Yeah, I was a slow kid," he nodded across the plaza, "Come on, we're burning moonlight."

"Figure of speech?"

"Yeah," he hesitated, "But you still have to come with."

Roxas nodded, his lips parting, showing off a set of teeth that, for all intents and purposes, looked pretty good given he hadn't exactly had many chances for dental upkeep lately. He continued down the stairs with a slow deliberation.

Axel looked around the amphitheater, feeling the night wind in his hair. Could it really be that, only three days ago, he and Rene had sat on those same steps, watching Dem and his Cardinal Points tearing it up to Boney M on this overgrown, grassy field?

His biggest concern had been getting out of town before the cops got on him. For bail jumping. _Bail jumping_! No wonder things got exciting so fast, Axel merited a bit more fanfare in his brand of trouble-making.

Well, technically, it had been bail jumping _and_ breaking a suspect out of the slammer, but that was another enchilada entire...

"Bingo!" he exclaimed, nodding to the dingy white van parked at the very end of the space, "It was either here or the nearest jail, and I don't think our boy's boys are hardcore enough."

He started over toward the van, expecting to hear the soft thudding of bare feet on the grass behind him. But, probably because that would have made things _easy_ , this wasn't the case.

"Roxas?" Axel turned back to the kid, who was now going back _up_ the stairs, staring at the ground ahead of him, as if working out complex equations in his head.

"Roxas?" he tried again, "Are we okay?"

"Just...weird."

"It definitely is. What is it?"

"The steps. It...it looks like a lot from the top. Less than it looks from the bottom."

Axel stared, "Uh...never noticed."

"But you notice now?" Roxas looked terrified, as if his entire claim to life hinged on Axel validating him on this.

"Well...I mean, I...um..." he shrugged, "Could be a trick. Like...er...whatchamacallit..."

"Whatchama..."

"An optical illusion," Axel snapped his fingers, "Like, something looks a way it doesn't?"

"Why?"

"Geez, man, I don't know. I had this...this friend, he had a whole book of them. Thought they were the shit."

Moonboy, feet propped up on the arm of the old Dugout sofa, the gaudy hardback book open in both hands, " _See? If you stare at the spiral, it starts to move._ "

" _No shit?_ " Axel had asked, smirking lazily.

" _No shit._ "

Axel snatched the book from his hands, " _So, when does the sorcery take effect? Or is that just something you can do?_ "

" _Well, you have to_ look _at it for a while, it doesn't just_..."

" _I can look at_ anything _for a while and it'll start doing tricks, Moonboy._ "

" _That's because you have the attention span of a fruit fly._ "

Axel propped his head up on the sofa leg, looking over Saix's feet at him, " _What was that?_ "

" _Exactly_."

" _Well, sorry, just that I was looking at ya so long, you turned green and your nostrils started whistling._ "

At which point Moonboy had thrown the book at him. Good times.

"So it's not real?"

"It's the same number of steps up as down," Axel shrugged, "It's a screwed up world, Roxas, but it's got _some_ rules," he jerked his head toward the van, "Our chariot awaits."

Roxas nodded, hurrying the rest of the way down the steps as if suddenly afraid that if he lingered any longer, the amphitheater would sprout a dozen new stairs just to spite him.

"What if they're not there?" he asked.

"We'll figure something else out."

"I thought _this_ was something else."

"There can be more than one something else. One thing you learn sticking with me, Roxas, I'm a resourceful little bastard when I wanna be."

Roxas didn't look convinced, but he never looked convinced, so Axel wouldn't be discouraged. He knocked on the back of the van, the first few bars of a certain ditty about a brown girl and a ring, just to prove he was a fan.

There was a clangor of footsteps from behind the doors. Axel turned to Roxas, "What did I tell you? I know my..."

"No _way_!" the door opened a crack, revealing first one, then two weary brown eyes, "Dude, I thought you were dead!"

"Dude, I almost was," Axel spread his arms wide, looking Hayner up and down, "Tell you all about it if you let us into the Music Mobile."

"Us?" Hayner squeaked the word, "Oh my God, did you find..."

He seemed to notice Roxas for the first time, whatever remained of that sentence turning into a sad deflating noise.

"This is Roxas," Axel clapped him on the shoulder, causing him to sway unsteadily on his feet, "He's cool."

"He's not wearing pants."

"He is not. Long story, and it's got a lot of missing pieces. Are we good?"

Hayner considered, and for a brief moment Axel found himself thinking that he probably _could_ just tell him to turn his ass around and walk down the line to Mexico without looking back. After all, he'd promised to get Demyx back and...well, Demyx wasn't back. And it's not like Axel had much of a reputation for trustworthy neighborliness. No point pretending otherwise.

But Hayner, at length, nodded, stepping aside, "Yeah, sure. Make yourselves comfy."

"Shouldn't be hard. It's been a _day_ , hasn't it, Roxas?"

Axel lifted himself into the van, offering Roxas a hand to help him up. The quick motion gave him time and space to whisper a quick, "Figure of speech, don't panic," into his ear.

The Cardinal Points' van was just what you expected anything shared by four hippies with an inordinate love for jamboree music to look: a crowded, patchouli-smelling mess. Axel ducked under a Navajo rug suspended loosely from the ceiling, to sink onto a musty beanbag with a Pence-shaped indent dead center.

He indicated for Roxas to come sit in the neighboring cushion, but Roxas was again otherwise occupied, looking vacantly around the van in muted wonderment, or perhaps unease.

"You not gonna sit down?" Hayner asked Roxas, apparently noticing this behavior.

Roxas's response to this was to flinch and then sit on the floor, on his knees. Hayner blinked, looking at Axel, "Where did you get this guy, again?"

"I didn't _get_ anybody. I found him."

"That's...that's barely even a difference..."

"He's cool, just let him be. Maybe he's just not fond of incense."

Hayner snorted, "You think _I_ like this stuff? Olette's been trying to smoke us out, I swear. Says we don't get how bad we smell..." he snorted, "Girls, right?"

"Stupid girls and their stupid incense, sure."

Hayner rolled his eyes, "I don't get it, how did you guys know where to find me?"

"Well, it's not like this was the first place we _looked_..."

"But why the _van_?"

"Honestly, I kinda assumed you lived here," he indicated the sheets and cushions scattered around the space, "Am I wrong?"

Hayner frowned, "We _all_ live here. Sometimes. Got to catch sleep between gigs."

"What, did Tubs and Starchild quit the band?"

"They're at a gig. Playing the Cabana, we..." his voice faltered, "We do this thing, every week, play a couple of sets."

"Good for you. Why aren't you with them?"

Hayner didn't answer at once, leaning against a faded Donovan poster on the wall, a faraway look in his eyes, "I'm not exactly feeling up to music, lately. Can you blame me?"

"Nah, I guess not."

"Where's Demyx?" he asked.

Axel considered. There were a few ways to answer this, and none of them were likely to satisfy Hayner very much. Sighing, he explained, "I know where he is."

"You saw him?" Hayner was speaking fast, "Well, what happened to him, how he is, is he okay...?"

"I didn't see him."

"But...you know where he is?"

"...yes."

Hayner furrowed his brow like he was thinking very hard. Excellent, they surely had the spare hours for that. At length, he lifted his head and asked, "Does this have anything to do with what went down at Dem's place?"

"Wait, what went down at..."

"Shoulda figured. Pence told me it was probably a coincidence. The hell does he know? And Olette thinks he's some kinda street poet, gimme a break..."

"We tried Market Street before," Axel spoke over him, "Saw the cop cars around. What happened there?"

Hayner looked surprised, "You don't know?"

"Apparently not. What, is it Marluxia?"

"You really don't know? Jeez, I mean...well, I kinda thought you had something to do with it..."

"He deserved it," piped up Roxas. Hayner stopped mid-sentence, staring at the kid with mouth agape, "He...he _what?_ "

"Kid's got a point, though, he totally did..."

"Yeah, I'm not arguing that, I always hated the guy, he had it out for us, I swear, but..." he blinked, "You _killed_ him?"

"Wait, what?"

Roxas was staring at him like a betrayed puppy, "Killed?"

"Wait, wait, no, I...I didn't _kill_ anybody. Like, I...I didn't push him _that_ hard."

Hayner frowned, "So...so it was Dem's sister?"

"Larxene? No! I mean, she put that record on to torture him a bit, but besides that..."

"Well, the cops think otherwise."

"The cops?" Axel leaned back, "Oh shit."

"They arrested her for the murder last night, I was just leaving the station when they got the call."

Axel ran his hands down his face, "No, this...that doesn't make any sense. We were together..."

Until they weren't. They'd gotten separated pretty fast after arriving at the Mansion. Maybe Larxene had gotten away, made it back to town, something... But Marluxia?

"The cops," he looked back at Hayner, "What did you tell them?"

"Not about _you_ if that's what you're worried about."

"It's on the list, but it's not top priority. You told them how you and Dem were grabbed?"

He nodded, "If I'm being honest, I don't think I helped them much. But that doesn't matter now."

"Please to explain."

"Well, you've been _somewhere_ , obviously," he nodded at Roxas, "What did you see, what happened?"

Axel sighed, "It's...it's kinda hard to..."

"Wait!" and Hayner scrambled forward, toward the driver seat, "Wait, wait, wait, hold that thought..."

"What is it, now?"

"Pence and Olette are gonna want to hear this. They're a part of this too."

"Says _who_?"

Hayner nodded to the crude compass rose painted on the inside of the doors behind them, "They deserve to know what happened to Dem, how they can help..."

"Yeah, man, I don't think that's a good idea..."

But Hayner had already picked up a phone from a clumsy panel wedged between the two front seats. Eyeing Axel as he dialed a number, he explained, "Car phone, came with the van. Sick, right?"

"Nauseating."

"Kronky, baby!" Hayner was already practically screaming into the phone, " _Cómo te va_ _aaaaaaa_?"

"Oh, that's rough," Axel muttered, wincing at the high octane attempt at Spanish.

"My guys treating you guys right?" his smile had become somewhat fixed, "Uh-huh? Yeah? Well, yeah, they know other songs. It's just, you know, our main guy's out of comish for a little while..." the smile got even more fixed, "Well, yeah, it's a good song! He likes it!"

The smile was promptly neutered, "Olette's doing what? Oh..." he nodded, "Yeah, well...whatever keeps 'em happy. Showbiz, right?"

He nodded a couple dozen more times, "Yeah. Yeah, sure. _Lo siento. Lo siento._ Normal table? You rock my socks. Catch you in a minute."

He hung up, looking at Axel, "Gigs."

"Is that what that was?"

In response to which, Hayner promptly gunned the engine, causing Roxas to yelp nervously, falling forward onto his face before the van was even out of park.

"Listen, Hayner, it's not like I don't appreciate your enthusiasm here," Axel attempted, "But the last guys who harbored _this_ fugitive," he pointed at himself to illustrate, "Didn't exactly come out better off."

"I'm not _harboring_ you. Dude, I can barely harbor myself. But I think the guys can help. This is a little too big for me."

"And, what, Crystal and the Fatman are better equipped?"

"Let's not get carried away." Hayner gave them an eyeful in the rearview mirror, "Pink bag, Mama Cass's face."

"This a secret code?"

"There's some extra clothes!" Hayner clarified, "Some of mine, some of Dem's..." he cleared his throat, "Everyone's. I'm about your boy's size."

Axel looked over to the haversack, on which the Plus-sized Pop Queen's face was printed, grinning chummily at nothing in particular.

"Didn't wanna have to do it," he grumbled, going over to the bag, "Thanks, though."

Hayner shrugged as Axel opened the bag and tossed it to Roxas, "Help yourself. Avoid the lady underpants."

"Olette doesn't do underwear."

Axel turned slowly, eyebrow cocked. Hayner replied, "What? She's my cousin. Cousins know this stuff."

"Sure they do, sport."

Roxas was rummaging through the bag, a look of intense concentration on his face. Axel was beginning to realize you didn't just initiate conversation with Roxas. Sometimes it was best to just let him be. So he watched him as he moved through the bag, withdrawing an alarmingly large teeshirt emblazoned with a dream catcher, winced, and put it aside.

Good. He had _some_ degree of self preservation.

Roxas eventually settled on a faded white military jacket and a pair of camo cargo pants. He ran a finger down the length of the jacket, brow furrowed, as if he were thinking really hard about something.

But whatever this thought was, it passed before too long, and Roxas nodded, looking up at Axel, "Should I..."

"Should you..." Axel realized what he meant, "Oh. Um...yeah, sure. I...I won't look, don't you worry."

"Why would I worry?"

"Well...getting dressed, modesty?"

"Modesty?"

"Yeah..." he sighed, "I mean, guess privacy doesn't mean a lot when you've been chilling in a fish tank for God knows how long."

Roxas gave a tiny, almost embarrassed smile as Axel pulled aside the rug hanging from the ceiling, "I'll keep my eyes to myself, man. No worries."

"I wasn't," said Roxas, "Worried."

"Good. I'm glad."

Roxas moved behind the rug, going carefully, as if afraid of tipping over, which wouldn't have been an unrealistic fear, given Hayner must have learned to drive in a blood sport arena.

Absentmindedly, Axel began going through the remaining contents of the Mama Cass sack, feeling his fingers come up against something smooth and small. Chuckling under his breath, Axel retrieved a guitar pick, not like the one he'd found at the Dugout, with the Cardinal Points logo. This one was older, more worn. Maybe more loved.

" _I'm collecting energy!_ " There had been several reasons he'd always forgotten Demyx was as old as he was, but this was one of them. He'd leaned against the low wall on the lakefront, that oversize floppy hat on his head.

" _My soul ain't for sail, Rainman, and even if it was, you wouldn't want it._ "

Dem had rolled his eyes, " _You're supposed to have a little something from the people who matter. Positive energy! It...it guides your hand._ "

" _Like magic?_ "

" _Like_ energy _._ "

What a precious idiot. Maybe he'd been the smartest of them all. Either way, Axel remembered sighing, nodding, and drawing a quick little sunburst on the side of the pick.

And here it was, still there, directly opposite the crescent moon, beneath the lightning bolt, and above the lumpy shape that he knew to be a raindrop.

"Record time!" Hayner announced, stopping the van with a jolt, "Get to get..."

He was interrupted as Roxas stumbled forward through the rug, apparently rocked by their sudden stop. Axel reached to catch him, but missed, so the poor guy went sprawling.

"Looking good," he told him, looking his new duds up and down.

"That's Dem's jacket," said Hayner.

"Dem wears jackets?"

Hayner shook his head, "Probably wouldn't mind you keeping it."

"Oh, you two would _love_ each other," Axel helped Roxas to his feet, indicating two worn sneakers from the bag he could put on his feet.

Roxas didn't seem entirely sure what to make of this, but he put the shoes on all the same. Axel turned to Hayner, "So...are you sure about this?"

"Pretty sure."

"May I remind you that I'm wanted for at least _two_ crimes, and that's not even counting whatever the hell happened to Rene and her pink persecutor."

"I don't think persecutor's a word."

"Point still stands."

"We're better off talking in the Cabana than in the back of the van," Hayner told him, "Besides, it's the Cabana, the place is always crazy."

"It's _Tuesday_."

"Always. Crazy." Hayner ducked under the rug and opened the back doors with a flourish, "Come on." he hopped down to the pavement.

Roxas looked at Axel, shrugging as if to say ' _Hey, I'm just doing what you're doing_ _,_ ' which was a very heartening reminder of the responsibility Axel sure as hell wasn't equipped to deal with.

Still, he gave Roxas a reassuring nod and hopped down from the van, giving Roxas a hand that he didn't need, simply stepping clear down from the van to stand beside him.

Axel didn't even realize at once that he was still holding Dem's old sitar pick, slipping it into his pocket. It just felt like the right thing to do.

The Cabana was a long, low brick building with high, metal-barred windows. It looked more like a warehouse, and given they were still in the lake district of town, it probably had been one up until very recently. Standing on the sidewalk outside, Axel could hear music, glimpse flashing strobe lights through the windows.

"So...the Cabana, huh?" Axel asked as Hayner started to lead them along, "Not one of the haunts from when I was a kid."

"Nah, it's pretty new. Whole district's turning into nightclubs, it's kinda sad but it's kinda awesome too. Dem loves it here."

"That's...cool," Axel looked over to Roxas, who was staring at the place with an air of unease, "You okay, guy?"

Roxas nodded slowly, "Just...loud."

"Yeah. Guess you're not that used to noise, are ya? It's okay, you listen to it enough, eventually it's like it's not even there."

"If I listen to it long enough..."

"Well, it's still _there,_ but, you know, notice it less."

Roxas didn't look very convinced, but then it didn't make a lot of sense anyway, so this wasn't that surprising.

Hayner was taking them down a narrow alley beside the Cabana, "Back entrance. Got an in."

"You guys play here a lot?"

"All the time. Kronk loves me."

"Kronk?"

"Kronky!" Hayner let out a whoop, saluting some hulking figure smoking a cigarette near a side door.

"Oh," replied a bass, unimpressed voice, "You showed up."

"I keep my word, don't I?"

"You don't, that's the problem," Kronk exhaled a plume of smoke, looking at Axel, then Roxas, "New meat?"

"Nah, friends of the band."

Axel hoped for his sake that this guy didn't watch the local news. As it was, Kronk was giving him an eyeful, "You look familiar."

Hayner tensed noticeably, which did a lot to reassure Axel that he knew what he was doing. Figuring he had to play damage control here, Axel considered, "Yeah, I've...uh...done a coupla gigs in these parts."

"Gigs?"

"Music gigs."

Kronk cocked an eyebrow, "Tall, skinny...you're not a dancer?" in the same unimpressed tone, he added, "You could be."

"I've...um...never gotten any complaints," Axel answered stiffly.

Kronk cleared his throat, looking at Roxas, "What's your story?"

Roxas let out a strangulated whelping noise, "M-my story?"

"You dance, you play music..."

Roxas began stammering, stumbling over words and pieces of words in a way that quickly lost all coherency and had Axel truly concerned his brain might start melting.

"He's a poet!" Axel interrupted, "Yanno, he's into that slam poetry stuff," he indicated his stammering compatriot, "As you can see."

"No kidding?" Gronk looked at all three of them, "No drugs, right?"

"Never," said Hayner.

"Never?" Axel looked at him in disbelief.

Kronk rolled his eyes, stepping to the side and nodding at the door, "Come on. I've got five minutes on this break."

Hayner nodded graciously and led them through the door into the club, "See? No problem."

"You're an idiot," Axel replied shortly, though his words were soon drowned out by music blaring from the speakers, a hum of chatter and laughter.

" _The fortune queen of New Orleans w_ _as brushing her cat in her black limousine/On the backseat were scratches from the marks of men her fortune she had won/ Couldn't see through the tinted glass,  
She said 'home James' and he hit the gas..._"

"That's Olette!" Hayner said approvingly, nodding to a slight figure on the raised stage at the end of the dance floor.

"So you guys _do_ know another song?" asked Axel.

"You kidding? We know a bunch, it's just that Dem likes one more than the others."

Olette was swaying around, shaking a tambourine into the microphone, in a way that didn't really work in a cavernous dance hall strung up with sound equipment. Beside her, Pence was fairing a bit better on the drums, but the two instruments alone didn't exactly seem made for Cher. Like, _any_ Cher.

" _I followed her to some darkened room/She took my money, she said 'I'll be with you soon'..._ "

"Wait a second..." Axel began, looking around the club, a new realization dawning on him as Olette reached the chorus, twirling around like some wild nature spirit, practically taking the mic stand with her.

" _Dark lady laughed and danced and lit the candles one by one..._ " two quick pivots with her hips, " _Danced to her gypsy music till her brew was done/Dark lady played back magic till the clock struck on the twelve,_ " a wild, discordant laugh that earned some cheers from the audience, " _She told me more about me than I knew myself..._ "

"This...this is a gay bar!" he looked from one pair of bearded revelers in mesh shirts to a human-sized Ken doll in a lopsided cop hat, a ring glinting in each ear _and_ each nipple.

"It sure is," said Hayner, looking quite pleased.

"You and Dem have been going to a gay bar..."

"Well, we _play_ at it sometimes too. You never heard of mixing business and pleasure?"

" _She dealt two cards, a queen and a three, and mumbled some words that were so strange to me/then she turned up a two-eyed jack, my eyes saw red but the card still stayed black,_ " Olette leaned into the mic, practically purring the next lines, " _She said 'The man you love is secretly true to someone else who is very close to you. My advice is that you leave this place, never come back and forget you ever saw my face..._ '"

She launched into the chorus again as Axel turned to Hayner, "Don't play cute. There's gotta be a hundred clubs in this town..."

"More like eight, and one of them is a jazz dive."

"You knew what you were doing," Axel smirked despite himself, "Coming here with Dem, didn't you?"

Hayner shrugged, "Demyx likes gays."

"And he _never_ figured out what you were up to?"

"He likes the chorizo too."

"You've got him thinking you only play here for the sausage?"

"Look, man, it's complicated, it's not like I can just..."

" _So I ran home and crawled in my bed/I couldn't sleep because of all the things she said_ ," Pence did a quick riff on the cymbals as Olette stiffened, pressing a hand to her heart, " _Then I remembered her strange perfume, and how I smelled it was in my own room!_ "

She took the mic off the stand and set to pacing up and down the stage, " _So I sneaked back and caught her with my man, laughing and kissing till they saw the gun in my hand..._ " Pence drummed out a sharp, short bang, almost like a gunshot, " _The next thing I knew they were dead on the floor/Dark lady would never turn a card up anymore..._ "

Hayner gave Axel an elbow in the side, singing lowly along with Olette, " _Dark lady laughed and danced and lit the candles one by one/Danced to her gypsy music till her brew was done..._ "

Axel rolled his eyes, chiming in, "Something something black magic, clock striked on the twelve...she told me more about me then I knew..."

Cheers, applause, one or two, "Get her, girl!"'s, whatever that means. Olette bowed, blew some kisses, yelled out something like, "You're a great audience!", or whatever, and started off the stage, followed by Pence.

"Okay, let me get her," Hayner told Axel, starting off through the crowd.

"Yeah, sure," Axel nodded, "We'll just...stay here."

He turned to Roxas, who was standing very still, as if to come even close to bumping into somebody would strike him dead on the spot.

"Gotta give it to Dem," said Axel, "I thought _I_ was oblivious."

"What?" Roxas asked.

"Well...Hayner's got a torch for him 'bout as flaming as this place..."

"Flaming..."

"...figure of speech. Doesn't sound like him, but maybe he knows how Hayner feels, playing hard to get."

"Why?"

Axel sighed, "Well...hmph," he shrugged, "I dunno, Roxas. Love's hard. And...well..." he gestured at the club around him, "This kinda love's probably harder than most."

"Why?"

Axel blinked. Well, shit. He wasn't sure he had the presence of mind for _this_ discussion, certainly not now.

He opened his mouth, readying some kind of explanation for something he wasn't sure that he could adequately explain, but was stopped by the arrival of their unlikely and somewhat unwelcome allies.

"You're him?" Olette's face was still shiny from the stage lights, and her voice had a breathless quality to it that, for all Axel knew, was pretty normal for her.

"I..." Axel began.

"Oh my God, you _are_!" Olette looked from Hayner to Pence, grinning, "Honestly, I thought Hayner was just on a trip."

"Thanks, cuz."

"Do you know what happened to Demyx?" asked Pence, "Did you see him, where is..."

"Fine, fine...I'll explain everything."

"Who's this?" asked Pence, looking at Roxas, "Is he okay?"

"I don't know," Roxas answered honestly.

"He's a little..." Hayner tapped his head with one finger.

"Oh, poor thing!" gasped Olette.

"Maybe we can sit down," said Axel, "Is that a thing we can do?"

"It's not the Four Seasons," said Pence, "But there's tables."

"Ooh, this guy's a comedian," muttered Axel, followed Sonny, Cher and Papa Cass to a tiny table way against the floor in a line with several others. Axel noticed there weren't a lot of people sitting down.

"I am _so_ thirsty," said Olette, "Hayner, next time, _you_ do a whole set."

"Well, hopefully we've got Dem back by next time."

"So you know where he is, then?" asked Olette, "Oh, we just met, but I can already tell we're gonna be great friends!"

"Is it my energy telling you this?"

Olette didn't answer, but her vacant smile indicated he'd spoiled the punchline for her.

"Nobody's answering," said Pence, " _Who_ is this guy?"

Roxas blinked, looking at them all. Axel sighed, "This is Roxas. He was locked up in the same place as Dem."

 _Hopefully under different circumstances_ , but he didn't want to say too much about what he didn't understand, certainly not to _these_ three.

"Does Roxas talk?" asked Pence.

"When he feels like it," said Axel, through thin lips.

"Well, pleased to meet you, Roxas," Olette smiled, "You've already met Hayner,"

"Yo," Hayner waved, returning from a brief absence with a tray of drinks.

"This is Pence," she put a hand over Pence's arm, which Axel was sure was meant as an intimate gesture.

"And I'm Olette!"

"Hayner..." said Roxas deliberately, looking at each of them in turn, "Pence, Olette."

"Exactly!"

"Hayner, Pence, Olette."

"I've got a Mai Tai, for you, cuz," Hayner slid a highball glass to Olette, who nodded graciously, "Tequila Sunrise for you, Pence."

"Naturally," Pence accepted his drink with a tiny smile that Axel was sure made him a real hit at parties.

"What are you guys drinking?"

"Hayner, Pence, Olette."

"Fuck," Axel clapped Roxas on the shoulder, "You good? It's fine...they're fine. Remarkably unremarkable."

Roxas blinked, attempted a smile, "Hi."

Olette twiddled her fingers.

"Think I'm gonna try for sober tonight," Axel said flatly, "Wait, they don't card you guys here?"

"Kronk owes Hayner a favor, doesn't he, Hayner?" Olette giggled.

Hayner frowned, "We don't talk about that."

"Please don't."

"We've got more important things to talk about anyway," said Pence, "Don't we?"

Axel sighed, "You're not wrong."

"You're Larxene's ex-boyfriend, right?" asked Olette, "Demyx thinks the _world_ of you."

"So I've heard. That's very _him_ of him."

"You're the guy that found Hayner yesterday, at the Dugout," said Pence.

"You told them that?" Axel looked at Hayner.

"I was talking to the cops for the whole day, I had to tell them _something_!"

"You can trust us," said Olette, "We care about Demyx as much as you do."

"Maybe more," said Pence, smiling smugly.

"So you must know what happened to Larxene?" Olette leaned forward, "Is it true she killed her boyfriend?"

"He says it isn't," said Hayner.

"It isn't! He was...he was alive when we left him."

"So you _helped_ her kill him?" asked Pence.

"I didn't kill anybody!"

"But he would've deserved it," said Roxas again.

"What's wrong with him, exactly?" asked Pence.

"What's wrong with _you_?" Axel tried, lighting up with a grin. Pence shrugged, taking a sip of his drink and proceeding to swish it around in his mouth like Listerine.

Good to know he'd fallen in with society this time.

"Why would he have deserved it?" asked Olette.

"You've met him, haven't you?" asked Hayner.

Axel sighed, "So, I tell you guys this, it stays at this table? This isn't some fun and games shit, okay?"

"Yeah, sure," Hayner nodded, "Like I said, you can trust us."

Axel gave Pence a suspicious look as he finally gulped that sip he'd taken down, "Marluxia's the reason Demyx got grabbed."

" _What?_ " Olette blurted as Hayner demanded, "No way?"

"Could you all try being _less_ excited?" Axel looked around the still buzzing club, "Please?"

"What did he do?" asked Pence, "I mean, I know he didn't like us rehearsing at his place..."

"It's a little more complicated than that. _He_ didn't want Demyx, his bosses did."

"His bosses?" asked Hayner, "What, you mean _X-_ Corp?"

"You know who Marluxia worked for?"

"Dude, we raided the guy's fridge every week for a year, we're not _stupid_."

"Is this because of that protest we did?" asked Olette, "I remember, TPD gave us a cease and desist for demonstrating without a permit..."

"Said we were on private property," said Pence, "Which, I mean, yeah, we were..."

"It belonged to the Indians first, and that never stopped them!" this was clearly a sore subject for Olette.

"Pretty sure this has nothing to do with whatever you're talking about," Axel said with what he believed counted as saintly patience, " _X_ -Corp wanted to get their hands on Larxene."

"But she works there too!"

"It was a blackmail thing. Luscious Looza found out something he shouldn't have, tried to use it to get a promotion, and he _did_..."

"But he had to hand over his girl?" asked Hayner, "Christ, that's whacked up."

"It gets whackier. Marluxia didn't want to give Larxene up..."

"So he gave up Demyx instead," Hayner frowned, "Son of a bitch."

"Larxene wasn't too happy when she found out either," Axel paused, realizing how that sounded, and added, "She still didn't kill him, though."

"So...Demyx is, what, some kind of corporate hostage?" asked Pence, "What're they doing with him?"

Axel noticed his attention lingering on Roxas, who stared back, something vaguely approximating irritation spreading across his face.

 _That's my boy_ , Axel couldn't help but think.

"I wish I could tell you. Larxene and I, we went to the place Marluxia said Dem was, but we got separated... I don't know what happened to her..."

"Well, we told you, she got arrested..."

"I don't know what happened to her _there_ ," Axel spread his arms, "But some of the shit I saw..."

"Not good," Roxas cut him off, speaking very matter-of-factly, "Nothing good."

Olette took a generous swig of her Mai Tai, "Do you think this has anything to do with the other disappearances? The girls?"

"Larxene's a girl!" chirped in Hayner, brightening up, "Maybe that's why they wanted her."

"You mean the kidnappings?" asked Axel, "That'd be a turn of events, considering I'm on the run for helping their _last_ suspect escape custody."

Axel sighed, "He's there too."

"What?"

"My friend, the guy they pegged as their first suspect. Someone..." he remembered Sora, collapsed in the elevator, writhing in some unimaginable, invisible pain, "...someone told me."

"Holy shit," said Hayner.

"Suddenly, paying their grunts starvation wages isn't even the _worst_ thing they've done," said Pence.

"But...why?" asked Olette, "Experiments?"

Again, all eyes went to Roxas. Axel shifted uncomfortably in his seat, "I don't really keep up with the news of the day, but I don't remember anything about some blond guy going missing."

"How do we know he's a guy?" asked Pence, "Did you check?"

Axel stared, "Sure, why don't we all drop our pants right now? Maybe Hayner can order me some of that famous chorizo, I'm thinking of a few exotic uses for it..."

"I'm a boy," Roxas said, "A...a guy. I am."

"But he doesn't remember anything that happened to him before I found him, so kindly stop harassing the kid."

"Geez, man, sorry," Pence rolled his eyes, "I just think it's weird that you adopted a lab experiment."

"He's a _person_. What, was I supposed to leave him there?"

"You left Demyx..."

Axel leaned forward, "I didn't _leave_ anyone. I don't know how to get to him, or what to do. Since you're _clearly_ some tactical genius, why don't you give me an idea?"

Olette raised her hand. Axel looked at her, blinking, "Yes?"

"Well...there's no reason to fight. We all love Demyx."

"Some of us more than others," added Axel.

"And we all want to help him. So maybe we can just focus on that, instead of all this...sniping?"

"I just realized," said Hayner, "Dem's librarian."

"What?" asked Pence, before raising his brow, "...Oh. Right."

"Dem mentioned a librarian, the day I got here. What, she was one of the girls who went missing?"

"Blue Belle," said Hayner, looking like he'd just smelled something far worse, "He thought she was something else."

"Belle was _nice_!" said Olette, "She'd put up posters for our gigs in the library common room, _without us asking_!"

"She knew what she was doing," grumbled Hayner.

"You're just _jealous_ ," trilled Olette.

"Wait...Demyx has a thing for the librarian?" Axel stared, incredulous.

"Don't ask me to explain, I could never figure it out," Olette shrugged, "But Dem was torn _up_ when she disappeared. I'm just saying...if this stuff is connected..."

"Maybe it is," Axel sighed, "I mean, if Riku's there, that's already a connection, unless there's some other reason they would've wanted to grab him..."

"You'd have to find some way to prove it," said Olette.

"Maybe Larxene knows something?" asked Hayner, "You said you got split up."

"Larxene's in _jail_ ," Olette pointed out.

Axel sighed, "I set _foot_ in any police station, I'm done for, and Demyx stays gone. Not to mention, Larxene would probably rip me a new one for getting caught..."

Not that he liked the idea of letting Larxene go down for a murder he was pretty sure she didn't commit. But something told Axel she'd want him to find Demyx and keep the cops as clear from this whole mess as possible. Axel had seen enough movies to know what happened to kidnap victims when their kidnappers got wind the law was onto them.

And, besides, Axel didn't exactly trust the Twilight Police Department any more than the Destiny one. He'd had enough unfortunate run-ins with both, often for superfluous reasons.

"This librarian," said Axel, "What, she's got no family, no friends..."

Hayner shrugged, Pence shook his head, but Olette considered, "Well, there's _someone_. It's kind of ugly town gossip, but...well, she had a boyfriend."

"Dem was pining after a kept woman?" Axel couldn't help but crack a grin, "You'd think he might've tried a little closer to home."

"Yeah," said Hayner bitterly, "You would."

Axel sighed, "So...what's this guy's name, how do I find him?"

"Well...that's hard," said Olette, "See, he's her _ex_ -boyfriend. Things were...messy between them."

"We don't know that," said Pence, "It was all just rumors."

"I'm good at reading people, Pence!" Olette looked at Axel, "They _hated_ each other, and everybody knew Belle wanted out."

"And she got out?"

Olette nodded, "And dropped off the face of the earth a week later."

Axel considered, biting his lip, "Sounds pretty textbook."

"Oh, the cops questioned him," said Pence, "Nothing came of it."

"Thought you didn't gossip?" but Olette was smiling. Pence rolled his eyes.

"So...a dead end? He's got nothing to do with it?"

"I wouldn't say _that_ ," said Olette, "I mean, just because the cops didn't do anything doesn't mean..."

"Rich guy?"

"Loaded," said Hayner, "Lives in some tricked out hunting lodge out by Departure."

"He's a _venture capitalist_ ," said Olette, "Don't ask what that's supposed to mean."

"Not that it matters how rich he is," said Pence, "Remember that one girl, the councilman's daughter? He was a bigshot and they still never found her."

"There was talk then too, though," said Olette, "Something about her boss doing stuff he shouldn't have been..."

"So he'd benefit from getting her out of the way."

"Just like Marluxia benefited, trading Larxene for Dem," said Hayner.

"It's something to go on," said Axel, thinking.

So it wasn't quite true that all the missing people were lonely cast-offs who nobody would miss. Maybe not that surprising, everyone had someone, somewhere. Sora, for instance, had a practical army behind him, if he'd really been as popular as Riku claimed.

Riku, however... It was really just Axel, wasn't it? His old lady barely ever checked in on him, Riku never even talked about her.

And then these girls, maybe even Kairi, who Riku had been accused of grabbing in the first place, starting this whole mess...

"Where'd you say this guy lives again?"

"Who?" asked Olette, "Gaston?"

" _Gaston_?" Axel blinked, "Seriously?"

"He's Canadian. The French kind."

"Gotta love Canada," muttered Axel, "Where does he live?"

"It's a...a hunting lodge. I don't have an _address_..."

"Might be worth checking out."

Olette trailed off, staring at him. Pence was swishing Tequila Sunrise around in his mouth again. Only Hayner seemed to approve, nodding, "Jackass could afford being taken down a peg or two. Let's do it."

"Let's?" Axel shook his head, "Nah, sorry. No 'let's'."

"Why the hell not? If it's about helping Dem..."

Axel had a sudden recollection of himself, insisting to Larxene that he go to the Mansion with her, that they work together, for Demyx's sake.

"I've already tried the teamwork thing. Didn't work out, as you know, she happens to be behind bars as we speak..."

"You came to me!" Hayner was almost yelling.

"Yes, for help. You've helped. But I'm not about to drag you guys to hell with me. Call it a moral impulse."

"Oh yeah?" Hayner eyed Roxas, "What about him? He coming with, or is the moral impulse telling you no?"

Axel felt Roxas's eyes on him and sighed, turning to him, "You don't have to go with me if you don't want to. I mean...I just..."

He wasn't sure what would be the polite way of saying ' _I'm not sure you can take care of yourself_ ', but it seemed he didn't have to.

Roxas nodded, "I'll go with you. If you want me."

"That's settled."

Hayner practically got up from his chair, "Demyx is my best friend, I...I can't just..."

"I've got a best friend too, buddy, you've got something a bit more serious," Axel leaned over the table, putting both hands on the cracked wood as he looked Hayner in the eye, "I know Demyx, maybe not better than you, but _hella_ longer. What do you think happens if we go off to find him and you don't make it. What do you think our Rainman does then?"

"Listen, dude, I don't know what you've _convinced_ yourself is going on between Dem and me..."

"I know. It's nothing. You want it to be something, but you never worked up the nerve to tell him, and now he's in trouble and you're starting to think you should be the hero, bail him out, _save_ his ass, and then tell him the terrible truth before it's too late."

Axel stopped for breath, realizing how much he'd spoken and how quickly, "It's a crock, man. 'Cause if something _does_ happen to you, if you _don't_ make it, then what the hell does Dem do with that? You love him, then you'll stay put and let _my_ ass take the damage."

Hayner was quiet, looking sheepish. Finally, he nodded, balled up his fist, raised it...

...and dropped a keyring into Axel's hand, "You can't just _walk_ all the way up there, can you?"

Axel stared, "You're giving me your van."

"For a limited engagement. We're counting on you," he looked over to Roxas, "Both of you. I guess."

"Please be careful!" Olette interjected, "I mean, I don't even know if this lead is gonna go anywhere, you might just get in more trouble..."

"Trouble's my skillset," Axel shrugged, "Thanks, guys. Really. I...I won't let you down."

"If you can help it, you mean?" asked Pence.

Axel smiled thinly, "Yes, if I can help..."

Hayner hugged him, "Good luck, Axel,' adding, in a lower voice, " _You bring him back to me, or I swear to God_..."

"I'll find him," said Axel, "Promise."

Hayner pulled back a little, nodding, "And, when you find him, maybe you could tell him..."

"I'll tell him his best buddy Hayner's itching to have a talk with him. Right?"

Hayner considered, "Why do you care so much? About me and Dem?"

Axel bit back a laugh, "Lately, I've been asking myself that question a lot. Wish I had an answer."

But that wasn't entirely true. He had a couple of potential answers, and he wasn't particularly eager to settle on any of them.

* * *

This junior detective bullshit was grating on Selphie's nerves.

"What if it's _not_ Sora's tag?" asked Zack, again, danging the ignominious trinket from his hand.

"It's his name, his number," said Tidus, exasperated, "His tag."

"Well...I mean, Cloud played varsity back when he was at Destiny High, maybe it's from one of the other guys from back then..."

"Another Sora who was _also_ a running back and _happens_ to have the same number!"

"We don't even know where Sora is!"

"We didn't know where your big bro was until he crawled in off your fire escape like a frigging zombie..."

"Oh, both of you, _stop_!" Selphie rolled her eyes, crossing her legs and looking around the sufficiently darkened (apparently keeping the lights at full brightness was not a medical necessity _or_ nicety after the Witching Hour), "You're giving my headache a headache."

"But it _is_ Sora's tag, right?" asked Tidus, "You _are_ with me on this?"

"So what if I am?" she shrugged, but Tidus was clearly hinging a lot of his self worth on her answer, so she sighed and said, "Yes, it's...it's obviously his."

"But that doesn't even make sense..." began Zack, only to be cut short by Tidus.

"Same night Cloud showed up, there was that news report...Sora on the Sunset Line," he shrugged, "Maybe they had a run-in."

"Maybe Cloud knows what happened to him," said Selphie.

"Maybe he had something to _do_ with it."

"Cloud would never!" said Zack, "Listen, guys, I...I know you've got no reason to believe me, but Cloud... No matter what happened to him all this time, no matter what he's done, I just can't see him doing _any_ of this."

"That's _your_ problem, then," said Tidus dryly.

Zack tensed in his seat, Selphie beginning to worry their was about to be another martial struggle in her midst, "I still think you should ask him."

"Ask him _what_ , if he kidnapped my friend?"

"You say Cloud trusts you, maybe he'd give you an answer..."

"He was _hiding_ his stuff!"

"In your bag..."

"It's broken!" Tidus exclaimed, "Son of a bitch broke Sora's tag..."

"Maybe it was an accident..."

Tidus let out a wordless exclamation of frustration. Selphie sighed, exasperated, getting to her feet, an action not lost on Tidus.

"Where to this time?"

"Not far," she started across the room, to where a certain perky-bottomed historian was sitting, bottom down (regrettably), soaking up light from the solitary reading lamp.

"Still here, Mr. Thatch?"

To which the teacher let out a short scream, nearly dropping his pen as he looked around the room frantically, finally settling his eyes on Selphie.

"Oh...Selphie. Yes, yes...I'm here."

"That's nice of you," she smiled, very charmingly of course, "I'm sure Sora's Mom needs all the company she can get."

"Sora's...Sora's...I'm sorry?"

"Well, unless you're really concerned about Kairi-or-whoever's well being and, who knows, maybe you are, but I'm pretty sure you and Sora's Mom have been shooting the breeze together all night, so..."

Thatch sighed, picking his pen back up from where he'd dropped it, "It's true, we've been spending some time together."

"That's cute."

He eyed her curiously, "Is it?"

"Well, you know, she's thirty-something and alone and I'm pretty sure _fun_ is a foreign concept to her. I'd call it a side effect of parenting, but you've never met _my_ mother..."

"I have, she went to a parent teacher conference," he frowned, "Didn't she?"

"You kidding? That was my old nanny, she still gets a new gig whenever Mom's strung out too hard."

Thatch stared vacantly. Selphie cleared her throat, aware of both Zack and Tidus watching from across the room, with varying levels of intensity.

"Whatcha doing, anyway?" she returned her attention to her teacher.

"What am I..."

"Crossword? I _wish_ had the patience, maybe then I'd figure out those silly matching columns on your quizzes..."

"You don't like the matching columns?"

"Well, they're _fine,_ Mr. Thatch, just a little first grade, but who am I kidding, you've _graded_ my stuff..."

"I just...you know, I've always believed learning's something like a game, a puzzle, so if you structure an exam like a puzzle..."

"Is that what this is?" Selphie again indicated the grimy paper in his lap, "A puzzle?"

It was a short time before Thatch answered her, "...yes. Yes, it is a kind of puzzle. A cipher puzzle."

"Like Sudoku?"

"Er...not quite, no."

There was an awkward silence before he returned to his work. Selphie could tell he was writing on the opposite side of the paper, frequently flipping it over again so he could study the funny, vaguely foreign language-looking symbols written on the other side.

"Amphitrite's asleep," here was Celeste, walking into the waiting room, pulling her jacket on over her shoulders, "She's got a cot next to Kairi...next to the bed," she paused, seeming to notice Zack and Tidus in the corner, then turned to Selphie, "You kids are still here?"

"Kairi's a friend," Selphie shrugged, "And even if she's not Kairi, she still crashed my big ticket performance. I demand an explanation."

Celeste smiled tiredly, "Well, you won't be getting one soon. She's in a coma."

Selphie felt her heart sink, "Oh no. For how long?"

Celeste shook her head, "I wish I could tell you," she started rifling through her purse, "Do you kids have a ride home?"

"Wakka skipped off to Morty's for onion rings three hours ago, and that's the last I saw of him," Selphie shrugged, "I'll cop a ride back with Tidus, no worries."

Celeste still looked worried, of course, but she turned to Thatch anyway, seeming to take an interest in his project.

"It's a word puzzle," Selphie explained with a smile.

"Is it?" asked Celeste, looking at Thatch.

"Oh," he looked at Selphie, giving her the distinct impression that this was one of those 'The adults are talking' things.

 _Puh-lease_.

"Well...it's coming along. I...I think I'm getting the idea, that is."

Celeste nodded, "Oh," she looked at Selphie, "Selphie, you don't mind leaving Mr. Thatch and I for just a moment..."

"Oh, well..." but before Selphie could contrive an excuse for sustaining her snooping, she felt an insistent hand on her shoulder.

"Yes, Zacharias?" she asked sweetly, turning around, "Oh, wow, it's both of you."

"Yeah, um, Selphie..." Zack began, his voice faltering.

"Oh, for God sake, just tell her!" said Tidus, from right over _his_ shoulder.

"There's...er...well, you see..."

Thatch's voice cut into Zack's stammering, speaking in what he clearly thought was a low and confidential tone to Celeste, "I've narrowed down the general gist of the message, but the cipher isn't perfect. And then there's these two words, they just don't make sense together..."

"Listen, guys," Selphie tried, keeping one ear open for eavesdropping as best she could, "I'd _love_ to play 'Clue' with you, but it's getting late, and my thinking cap is _woefully_ out of season..."

"It's not thinking!" said Zack, "We...we found..."

"We _didn't_ find..." corrected Tidus.

"Wait, let me see that," Celeste was saying, apparently taking the paper from Thatch to have a better look.

"It's gone!" Zack blurted.

"Look, this Thing 1, Thing 2 gimmick you guys have going on is _really_ cute," said Selphie, "But you're losing me here."

"It's the scarf!" said Tidus, "Cloud's scarf is..."

"Cloud?" Celeste lowered the paper, looking up at them, brow creased in concern, "Did...did you say _Cloud_?"

Selphie could feel her heart beating deliberately away in her chest, Zack tensing next to her. She could almost imagine Tidus imploring the both of them with a silent glare not to say anything else, not to give them away.

"Cloud," said Zack at last, "My brother."

Celeste let out a long, low sigh, exchanging a worried look with Thatch, "At Cid's, Sunday, you...you did say you had a brother. I remember, you and..." she broke off suddenly, looking around, her eyes taking on a new expression that Selphie would realize later was dawning fear as she asked, in a ghost of a voice...

"Where's Aerith?"

"Aerith?" asked Thatch, confused.

"The singing waitress?" asked Tidus.

"She was in the parking lot," said Selphie, "We spoke..."

"No," said Zack, "I remember, she came back in for a little bit after..." he looked to where he'd left his gym bag, his mouth hanging agape, "The scarf."

"Oh no," Selphie pressed a hand to her mouth, but Zack was already peeling out of the waiting room.

"Shit!" cursed Tidus, "Fair...Fair, wait!"

Zack wasn't paying any mind, though. With a muffled expletive, and a helpless look Selphie's way, Tidus followed.

"Well, just leave me, why don't ya?" huffed Selphie, throwing on her jacket, reaching for her bag. She felt Celeste's hand on her arm.

"Wait, Selphie..."

"No time, sorry!"

But she heard Celeste's footsteps following her out of the waiting room and down the hall. Fine, nothing she could do about that now.

"Selphie, this is serious!" Celeste was running, her coat trailing behind her like a grand dame's opera cape, her purse swaying back and forth at her side.

"You don't have to tell _me_ that!"

"I am _so_ confused!" and now Thatch had joined the procession as they hit the stairs, "Cloud Strife, that's a _name_? I thought it was a noun and an adjective..."

"Zack's older brother."

"He went to Destiny High, you never had him?" asked Selphie.

"I don't _live_ in the school! How old do you think I am?"

"Zack!" Selphie called as they reached the parking lot, "Zack?"

She could glimpse two figures, running almost neck and neck at the far edge, "Dammit, Tidus," she screamed, "You have a _car_!"

"Where are they going?" Thatch practically squealed, "Where are _we_ going?"

But Selphie was already running, a fresh, wet wind in her hair, the promise of new rain lashing her face.

"Selphie!" Celeste panted from just beside her, "What is this about? I thought Zack's brother was estranged..."

"Oh, he's plenty strange, don't get me started..."

"Wait, he's _here_?"

Selphie turned to her and was surprised to feel tears welling up in her eyes as she nodded, "It's not Zack's fault, he just wanted to protect him..."

"But this Cloud...what has he _done_?"

"You're the one with the secret letter, you tell me!"

None of them breaking their pace, they started down the street, Zack way ahead, Tidus a bit behind, then Selphie, Celeste right beside her, Thatch struggling to keep up at the end. Thunder rumbled somewhere in the darkened sky, a car honked its horn in the distance. Selphie was sure they cut quite a picture, their merry marathoning menagerie of morons.

"Milo?" Celeste wheezed, looking over her shoulder.

"Oh, he's _Milo_ now?"

"Shut up, Selphie!"

Thatch wheezed brokenly, "It's...it's not exactly clear, like I said, the cipher isn't perfect, there's some words we never bothered to account for..."

"What do you _think_?"

"It...it says..." he scrambled to steady his glasses before they went toppling from his nose, "...she says this Cloud, he...he works with these..."

"Oh, _please_!" Selphie begged.

"Murder!" Thatch cried out, "He's a murderer."

Celeste looked from him to Selphie with wide eyes, but Selphie was already peeling off down the hill, toward the both receding and approaching figure of Tidus.

"Starting to remember why he's running back in the first place," he wheezed to her as she drew up alongside him, "Dude's not stopping."

"Well, we've _got_ to stop him!" Selphie demanded.

"Wanna throw something?"

"Tidus, it's serious! Cloud...we were right!"

"What?"

" _You_ were right, he's no good, bad news, _dangerous_ , we can't..."

"We can't!" said Tidus, "Jesus, Selph, we already _did_!"

Another peal of thunder as they reached Zack's building. Selphie could hear her blood roaring in her ears, her face hot and sticky. Without thinking, she grabbed for Tidus's hand, only to find that he'd grabbed for hers first.

The top floor, stair after stair after stair. They could hear commotion from other apartments, doors opened on the other floors. Chatter, whispering. Footsteps on the steps behind them.

In the distance, but growing steadily clearer...crying. Whimpers.

Selphie felt the tears on her face, looked at Tidus, saw how pale he'd gotten, pale and still. Time seemed to slow down as they reached the top of the floor. Selphie was dimly aware of the footsteps behind her that she knew must be Celeste and Thatch catching up. She didn't turn to face them, she knew she couldn't, even if she tried.

The door to Zack's apartment was open, and the crying was coming from inside.

"No," Selphie whispered, looking over at Tidus as she ran ahead of him.

Zack was standing in the doorway, as if frozen in place. There were tears on his face, but his expression hadn't changed. There was a cold wind blowing through the apartment, cold and wet. A window was open...no, broken. The window out to the fire escape.

There was a short cry, a gasp. Celeste and Thatch had arrived behind them, Selphie could feel Celeste's hand on her shoulder, just barely. She wasn't sure she could really _feel_ anything at the moment.

There was a figure up against the wall, over the sofa, splayed as if crucified. Her clothes had been cut from her body, exposing what would have been perfect, alabaster white skin, were it not stained ugly, dark red with blood.

Long waves of chestnut hair obscured her face, which must have been deliberate, the better to draw attention to the huge gashes, crisscrossed over her naked front, in the shape of an _X_.

* * *

 **A/N:** And another one bites the dust. Though, I guess, this particular one might have been a foregone conclusion. The danger's getting closer to home, and threats open up on every front.

I feel this is a good spot for a longer break between chapters. Chapter 24 will be up two Fridays from now and will follow, quite literally, right where I left you off here.

Thanks, as ever, for reading!


	24. Demons Within

Chapter 24, Demons Within

 **A/N:** Welcome back! A big thanks as always for waiting. I figure if I'm going to put more than one week between updates, there should at least be a good enough cliffhanger. Hopefully this is a good enough follow up!

* * *

Squall had been counting on finding some answers in Destiny. He hadn't been counting on _this_.

He'd barely had time to sit down at the station before calls had come in from across town, before dispatch asked for an ambulance, a forensics team...and a detective.

As luck would have it, the other detectives were well on the other end of the county.

Aerith Gainsborough, 23 years old, waitress by day, student by night. Squall had seen enough bodies in his life to know that you could never really tell these things about a person's life just by looking at them dead.

Bodies seemed to shrink after the life has left them. So it had been with Seifer's little red haired girl down in the Underworld, so it had been with Rinoa... No matter how fierce, indomitable, _bright_ you were in life, none of that mattered after the fact.

But maybe some of Aerith's reduced stature could be explained by the _X_ spanning her body, carved perfectly, deliberately, into her skin, from shoulder to hip, neatly gliding past each breast, with such attention that Squall felt even his stomach might start turning.

Not that this bout of queasiness had anything on the other unfortunates in the room.

"She's...she can't just be..." the girl was weeping copiously, which almost made her stubborn refusal to accept this endearing, "She can't just be..."

"Does she _look_ alive?" the other kid, the messy haired blond one.

"Don't talk to me like I'm stupid!"

"I'm not..." he caught himself, " _you're_ not, it's just..."

"Not fair," the woman said softly, tears shining on her cheeks, "It's not fair."

Squall turned to look at her, sizing her up, "You're Celeste."

She blinked, frowning, "Y-yes. Yes I am. I'm sorry, have we..."

Squall thought of a playing card, pushed across a green felt top to him. ' _THEY'LL KILL CELESTE'S BOY_ '.

But he said, "At the station, for a short while. You're Sora's mother."

She nodded, "I must be bad luck. Sora, Kairi..."

"I don't believe in luck."

Though he was becoming increasingly convinced in the presence of _some_ invisible force of inevitable circumstance. How else to explain him arriving right on the heels of _this_?

Giving another look at Aerith, the mark on her chest, bigger and rawer than the Beautiful Soul in the Underworld, never mind his own surgical scar, and Seifer's, Squall addressed the five unlikely...witnesses? Not quite the word, from what he'd gathered. Suspects?

Most detectives would assume they were all suspects. Squall might've too. But he knew better, and that was just the trouble.

It felt like going into an exam and knowing the answer from the start. Like he'd cheated, but at no benefit to himself.

"I'd like to get a statement from each of you."

"Must you?" the bespectacled man, schoolteacher, blurted, his eyes widening, "I-I mean, I'm...I'm sure we all know nothing..."

"You all discovered the body," Squall answered flatly, "In single file."

"Well, nothing about the..." he let out a shaky sigh, and Squall noticed his hands were shaking. He sounded near ready to burst into sobs, "the... _her_. N-nothing about..."

"Mr. Thatch has nothing to do with this," the other kid hadn't spoken at all since Squall had arrived. His voice was tiny, hoarse, his eyes red, "Really...n-none of them," he sighed, "This is on me."

The girl, Selphie, tensed noticeably, putting a hand to her mouth. Judging by the intense working of her jawbone, she was whispering furiously, in a tone maybe a very keen dog might be able to hear, but nobody else.

"Still," said Squall firmly, "I'd like to hear from you all."

Selphie made a long deflating noise.

"Individually," he added.

Even faster deflating noise.

"I'll go first," said Celeste, prompting Selphie to re-inflate somewhat, "I...I did know her best, after all," she bit her lip, "I think."

Squall considered, looking at Selphie, who was breathing heavily, pressing her hand to her heart, at Zack, who was leaning against the wall, eyes closed, mouthing something to himself, to Tidus, who had one fist balled up, the other rapping out short taps on the coffee table.

"Follow me," he relented, nodding down the way to the kitchen. Milo Thatch put his hand on Celeste's arm as she went, as if to stop her, but she kept on.

"Have a seat," he indicated the kitchen table as they entered, "Please."

Celeste looked at the chair, as if considering the prospect. Eventually, she did sit down, crossing her arms in front of her like a schoolgirl at her desk.

"You knew Aerith Gainsborough..."

"We worked together," she said softly, "Waitresses at Cid's. She started, oh...a year or so ago," she took on a misty quality, tears shining in her eyes, "Had to pay for night school."

"You were close to her?"

Celeste shook her head, "We were...friendly. That was her, she...wanted to be everyone's friend. I'm afraid I didn't really think much of her until...until Sora went missing."

Sora... Sometimes it was easy to forgot Squall wouldn't be in this position if it weren't for Sora, that his excursion to the Underworld had been an attempt to find him, and the girl Kairi too.

Well, he _had_ found one of them, but who knew where he'd ended up. Not like he could _ask_ anyone about it.

"She...comforted you?" he prompted.

Celeste let out a shaky breath, crying freely, "I'm...I'm sorry. I shouldn't be so weepy, it's just...she was _good_. A good person. Kind, innocent. You end up thinking that kind of innocence is all gone in this world, and there she'd be. Smiling and...and singing and sweet. And always ready to listen."

Squall nodded. He wished he had some kind of deeper profile on this woman, but their forensics team was scant, and their research team even scanter than that. He doubted Celeste was lying, of course. The woman had no reason to lie, and she'd suffered too much in too short a time. Most people weren't built for that kind of thing.

"She was at the hospital tonight?"

Celeste nodded, "Cid's did catering for the school assembly. I was the only one not working. After...after Kairi walked onto the field, we all went together."

Deciding not to press further on the nonetheless alarming (Ratcliff hadn't been able to explain it with any degree of coherency either) story of the not-dead teenager who may just be her own mother, Squall continued, "And Aerith left because..."

Celeste shifted in her seat, "It's my understanding that she found something."

"...found something?"

"You'd have to ask Zack, it was in his bag," Celeste looked around the room, "Detective?"

"Yes?"

"Zack is Sora's age. All of them, Selphie and Tidus...they're all his age. Kids."

"...yes?"

"And kids...well, they don't always see the full picture of things, do they? I know I didn't. But I know how...how _fierce_ loyalty can at that age..."

"You're suggesting these kids are trying to protect somebody?"

Celeste sighed, "I feel terrible just saying this..."

"You seem to think I won't hear it from anyone else."

"The night Sora disappeared," Celeste continued, her voice barely audible, "I stayed late at Cid's. Believe me, I've dissected that evening enough this past week, telling myself I should've gone home earlier, maybe I would've stopped him going off after Riku, or...or whatever he was trying to do."

She sighed, "That's not important now. But Aerith, she...she knew I was worried about him, missing his big football game, getting in that fight with Riku...and of course Kairi disappearing. I...I forgot exactly how we got there, but she started telling me about this...this boy."

Squall cocked an eyebrow. Realizing he hadn't had time to grab a notepad when he was summoned from the station, he grabbed a blank sheet labeled ' _GROCERIES AND GOODIES_ ' from a sticky pad on the fridge and, taking his pen from his pocket, made a heading.

"A boy. Like a boyfriend?"

Celeste nodded, "A high school sweetheart, I guess you would call it. She... _loved_ him, that much was clear. I had a similar experience when I was that age. Met a man I thought I couldn't live without, stayed with him despite the rest of the world's protests... We talked about that."

"What happened to him?"

Celeste looked up, confused. Squall clarified, "Her boyfriend?"

She shrugged, "Her boy and mine, the answer's the same. They left. I think Aerith said...six years ago. And she was determined to wait for him."

"For six years?"

"For six years."

"You seem to have a theory."

"I wish I didn't. I wish it didn't make all the sense it did. But...but these kids..." she trailed off, "It's not their fault, it isn't, I know if it were me, if it were Sora, I'd do whatever I could..."

Squall could feel his shoulders go rigid, his fingers tense on the pen. Here was this woman, breaking down across the table from him, her friend's body in the next room, racked with worry over her lost son.

Squall remembered Sora as he'd seen him, briefly, in the Coliseum, in all that chaos, whisked off by Riku on his bike, off into the darkness. He'd been thrown into a fighting pit, left for dead...he may well _have_ been dead, Squall knew very well how those games operated.

But he'd survived. He'd made it out.

"I'm sorry," he said at length.

Celeste stopped short, "For what?"

"Your son. I'm sorry we haven't found him. And I'm sorry you have to deal with this now."

Celeste considered, looking taken aback, "Thank you. That...that's very kind of you to say."

"I believe it," he sighed, "I think I'd like to see the boy."

She raised her eyebrows, "You...you don't want to ask me about Aerith's..."

"I think it'll come together in the end. The boy, please."

"Zack?"

"Er...no," he shook his head, "The other one."

"It's...it's _Zack's_ apartment, though."

"I know."

Celeste still looked confused, but she got to her feet and left the room. Squall listened to the distant sound of wind and rain lashing the sides of the building, the somewhat more distinct chatter from the next room.

This boyfriend... It seemed so improbable, and yet at the same time it was the only thing that made any sense. Perhaps he'd been more right than even he knew to strike back for Destiny. Clearly he was needed here, for one thing or another.

"Yo."

Squall looked up to regard the beach bum in the disheveled football uniform standing in the doorway, "Tidus?"

"That's me," he gave the chair one look before disregarding it, instead just propping one arm up on the table, "Listen, man, I'm just gonna be straight with you."

"Good for you," he said flatly.

Tidus unclenched his fist, letting a thin silver chain hang from his hand, "Know what this it?"

Squall blinked, unimpressed, "I know testing my patience is a real bad move."

"Destiny High team tag. Belongs to a certain star running back," he tossed it to Squall, who caught it in one hand, examined the name and number.

"Sora's," he frowned, "Why do you have it?"

"Why do I _have_ it?" demanded Tidus, " _Why_ do I _have_ it?"

"Want to add another word for emphasis, or am I gonna get an answer?"

"You don't know me, man. You don't know a _thing_."

"Then tell me," Squall said shortly, "Please."

"I've known Sora my whole life. He's my best friend, my brother. You have a brother?"

Squall crossed his arms, bristling under the upstart kid's petulant stare. Unbidden, he thought of a loud, childish cry, laughter turned to sobs. The noise of a hand against flesh

"No."

"Then I'm sorry. 'Cause it's the best damn thing. You've always got someone in your corner, fighting for you, goofing off with you, _protecting_ you. That's Sora and me."

"That's very heartening."

"Five days," Tidus nodded, "He's been gone _five_ days, and the only sign of him is maybe he jumped off a moving train."

"What do you want me to say? Apologize for not finding him?"

"Seems to me if you can't find _Sora_ , you're probably not gonna find this guy..."

"Guy?" Squall parted in his lips in a tiny smile, "What makes you think it's a guy?"

Tidus made some noise in the back of his throat, mouth still hanging open. Finally, he said, "What makes you think it's a girl?"

"Nothing at all," Squall figured he'd learned all he needed. The kid knew _something_ , and he was beginning to think he knew what.

"I'm gonna want to talk to Selphie."

"She didn't do anything."

"Did I say she did? I'm talking to _everybody_."

Tidus grimaced, closing his fingers around the dog tag again, as he turned and left the room. Squall sighed, listening to muffled conversation from the next room. He could almost imagine Tidus getting these kids into a football huddle, planning their next moves.

It was almost cute. Squall relished this brief return to normalcy, sorting out suspects. If only he could convince himself he _needed_ to hear all this.

But perhaps he did. Because as much as it felt he'd come into this crime scene already knowing all he needed to know, he still couldn't help but think there was something eluding him, some deeper meaning, something his taskmasters back in the Underworld either hadn't thought to tell him, or didn't know themselves.

"I'm Selphie Tilmitt. 17 years old, 5719 Audley Street, don't I need a lawyer?"

"I'm not charging you with anything."

Selphie smiled shrewdly, "Please. I say one wrong word and that changes."

"Only if that one word is incriminating."

The smile slipped a few notches. She shrugged, "This feels like a trap."

"A woman's dead. I'm only trying to learn the facts."

"I never met her."

"Never?"

"Never," she paused for half a second, "Well...okay, not entirely true. She waitressed for us at Cid's once. But I don't do Cid's a lot, it's too greasy, and ever since they showed us that poultry farm documentary in Natural Sciences, I can't even _look_ at chicken wings..."

"But she must have some relationship with Zack?"

"What? Why? Why would she?" the three questions at bullet pace, one after the other.

"Unless, of course, she was visiting his brother, but I was under the impression he doesn't live here any more."

"He doesn't," said Selphie, sounding suddenly very thirsty, "Not for a long time, _I've_ never met him."

"Ah," Squall nodded, "So why was she here?"

"I don't..."

"She didn't have a key to the apartment, did she?"

" _How_ would I know the answer to that one?"

"The only forced entry is the window, and I doubted she came in through there. Someone must have let her in."

"Well, it wasn't _me_."

"No, you arrived later, with the kid that lives here, his football teammate, your history teacher, and your missing friend's mother?"

"It's not like we were out clubbing, or anything, we were all at the hospital together."

"And you all came _here_ together too. On foot. In the rain."

"It didn't start raining till _after_ we got here."

"What exactly is your relationship with Zack?"

Selphie scoffed, "Is this for the record?"

"I'm not _personally_ interesting in this high school crap, so yes, it _is_ for the record."

"Didn't think who I do and don't hang out with was so important to a _murder_ investigation."

"He's your friend...boyfriend..."

"We hang out."

"So Tidus is your boyfriend?"

"Why does he have to be my boyfriend?" she exploded, "Can't a guy and a girl have a nice, honest, _platonic_..."

"I saw the way he was holding you when I showed up. Kid like that doesn't go out of his way to make someone feel better if they're just _friends_."

"Really?" Selphie asked brightly, before hardening her tone, "It's none of your business."

"No," Squall allowed, "Maybe it isn't. I'm just curious as to what got you all..."

"I never did anything to anybody!" she cried, sounding on the verge of tears again, "Sure, maybe I talk a lot, maybe I said some things to some people about other people that maybe weren't true. Yeah, maybe I'm a little obnoxious, isn't everyone? I never _tried_ to hurt anybody, I didn't, it's not my fault people are stupid! At a certain point, you've just gotta step back..."

"Is that what happened to Aerith? You told her something you shouldn't have?"

Selphie stiffened, "I _never_ told her to come here. There's no one that can prove that to you, but it's _true_. You wanna dig your claws in something, why don't you look at Mr. Thatch's little crossword puzzle. _I'm_ not keeping anything from anybody."

"Everybody's keeping something from somebody," Squall shrugged, "What's this crossword puzzle about?"

"You'd have to ask him," she got to her feet, "I'll go get him for you."

"Did I say this interview was finished?"

"It isn't?"

Squall rolled his eyes, "For what it's worth, you didn't do a lot to help your case here."

"Believe me," she told him, "I know."

And so she went. Squall didn't need any deep affirmation that she wasn't being entirely up front with him. Everybody he'd spoken to so far tonight was trying desperately not to say _something_. They were scared, and why not?

But scared of...

"Um...hello."

Squall looked up, nodded a greeting at the fretting, tweed-clad man in the doorway, "Mr. Thatch?"

"Yes, yes," he nodded rapidly, "Mr. Milo...sorry, Milo Thatch. Mr. Milo Tha..."

"I get it," he indicated the chair, "Please. Sit."

Thatch wasted no time, "Sir, I'd...I'd like to begin by...by confessing something."

"Really?" he tried to hide his surprise, to little avail.

"This...this girl, Aerith...and I. I'm sure Celeste's told you, and if not, Selphie probably did, Lord knows she's a washerwoman..."

"Let's pretend I haven't heard anything about you and Aerith yet," said Squall, "In your own words."

Thatch sighed, running his fingers through his hair, "I...um...I first saw her over the weekend. At the...at the Dalman Club, in Traverse. She was with Celeste."

"When you say you _saw_ her..."

"I'm afraid I made something of an ass of myself. Scared her away, maybe. I...I didn't know she wasn't...wasn't _available_ , per se."

"She was in a relationship?"

"She never left one. And...and to be honest, I wasn't really trying to...to _find_ anybody in that way. But...but there was something about her, her grace. Do you...do you know mythology, Detective?"

 _Oh, Christ._

"More than I would like."

"She's...she had such a quality about her. Like a Pleiade, or a Hespiride. This effortless grace, and beauty...and a _kindness_. There was something almost angelic in her."

Squall again felt his fingers clench on the pen. Thatch didn't seem to notice. Indeed, he was still talking.

"What kind of person could just... _leave_ someone like her? And she still waited. She _waited_ for him, that's the worst part..."

"And then he finally came back?" Squall prompted, "Is that what you believe?"

Thatch looked up sharply, "I...I couldn't possibly...I mean, I don't..."

"It's only that you have a lot of resentment for a man you've never met."

"Well, I...I'm sure I don't..." he let out a short whimper, "You've never cared about someone stuck with someone who didn't deserve them?"

Squall didn't dignify that with a comment, rich as the potential answer might've been.

"This man, this...this Cloud..."

"You know his name?"

Thatch stopped short, staring at Squall with wide eyes. Without warning, he burst into tears, just sobbing, hunched over the table.

Squall watched, not sure whether to feel exasperated or impressed. This was the first display tonight that had come off as entirely genuine. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen a grown man _cry_ so openly as this, so broken, so desperate...so _sad_. And hopeless.

And he'd barely known the girl. Just know the kind of girl she _was._

 _And she's dead and he's beating himself up for it. He shouldn't. You know the truth, you_ know _what happened, even if you don't know how or why. You can end this, fix it. That's your job, your responsibility..._ Do _something._

"It's not right," Thatch wheezed brokenly, getting to his feet and staggering over to the counter, "It's just not right..."

"No," Squall agreed, "It isn't."

He added, with a sigh, "Thank you."

Thatch looked at him, "Please don't," he pushed himself off the counter, straightening his jacket out, "Shall I go get Zack? As I recall, he's..."

"He's the last one," Squall nodded, "I'd appreciate it,."

Thatch made a noise like a laugh and a squeal rolled up together, but he nodded and was gone.

 _You didn't ask him about the 'crossword'_ , he realized, _What the hell's happened to you?_

But he knew. It didn't make it any better, but he knew,

"Hey," Zack, like Tidus, was still wearing his football uniform, presumably from the ill-fated school assembly he'd heard so much about.

Squall nodded a greeting. Zack shifted from foot to foot before saying, hoarsely, "There's...um...there's Pop Tarts in the cabinet," said Zack, indicated the pantry, "If...if you want them. I know it's pretty late."

Squall hated himself for actually considering that proposal. Given his pals underground hadn't exactly prioritized keeping him fed, even sugar-saturated cardboard sounded mouth-watering.

But he was still a cop.

 _Dirtier than Mr. Smee's scalpels, but still...a cop._

He shook his head, indicated the nearby chairs, "Sit. Please."

Zack looked at the chair, bit his lip, "It's okay."

Squall shrugged, "Suit yourself."

He resumed his earlier position, leaning against the counter, watching Zack pace awkwardly up and down the room.

"I've heard a lot tonight," Squall began, "A lot of nothing. And I get it. A woman dies like this, nobody's ready to say anything. Why would you be? Nobody asks for something like this. It's sudden, it's scary, it's sad..."

"It's my brother."

Well, shit.

Squall raised his eyebrows, "Cloud?"

Zack nodded, "Aerith, she was his girlfriend, back in the day. Then, when he left...I dunno, I guess he promised her he'd come back one day."

"Did he make the same promise to you?"

Zack chuckled humorlessly, "Cloud didn't talk a lot back then. There was something...broken in him, right before he left. I...I could never figure it out. He just left."

"You don't know where?"

"Nah," Zack shrugged, "I don't think he ever said anything about it. Just...things were pretty tense at home then. Maybe it made sense he wanted to get out."

He let out another breath, "He was a good brother. Honest, he was. Looked out for me. I...I needed a lot of looking after. He would keep the other kids off my back, stuff like that."

"How?"

"Well...I dunno, I...I guess he would scare them off, you know?"

"He was scary?"

Zack stiffened, "He...he didn't...he _isn't_..." he ran both hands down his face, slumping over the counter along the way from Squall, "I can't!"

And, shoulders heaving, he broke down, sobbing brokenly. Squall looked on, uncomfortable. Two cases of spontaneous weeping, one after another seemed a bit much. And there was a quality to this kid, just how tiny, how overwhelmed he seemed. None of Tidus's arrogance, Selphie's aloofness, Thatch's defeat, even Celeste's regret.

This wasn't sadness. It was _guilt_.

Squall sighed, "Listen. You seem like a good kid..."

Zack shook his head, "Everybody says that. My Mom, my coach, the old lady who makes me take her places...I'm not _good_!" he brought one hand down onto the counter, "Good people don't think when they do good stuff, they just...they _do_ it."

"Depends what the good thing is, doesn't it?" Squall asked softly, "Sometimes you don't know you've done a good thing till you've done it."

"It's not like that. Not with me. I...I _knew_ something was gonna happen, something bad, but I told myself it was nothing, I was just freaking out for nothing, just like I do with everything, but now..." he wiped at a runny nose with the edge of his jersey, "I did this. That girl's dead, and she's dead because of me."

"You didn't do this."

"I let him in!" Zack wailed, "I let him in, it's my fault..."

Squall pushed himself for the counter, understanding, "Cloud was here?"

Zack nodded, "He...he came back a few days ago. Needed a place to stay. I...I couldn't just say no. you get that, right? He...he's my brother and he was in trouble..."

"Do you know what kind of trouble?"

"I never asked him. I know I should've, but..."

"Who else knows about this?"

"Nobody," Zack answered at once, "I swear. I never told anybody else."

"Not even Aerith?"

Zack sighed, "She found his scarf."

"A scarf?"

"In my gym bag. I don't know why Cloud put it there, but he did and...and at the hospital, well...I guess she must've found it. It was his scarf back then too, maybe she recognized it. Thought she could come here..." a shaky breath, "...see him again. I guess she did."

He remained there, crying over the counter. Squall watched, thinking of Ariel, the Beautiful Soul floating facedown in that dirty water, the black feather on the floor... The yellow feather, draped neatly over Rinoa's still body.

"You believe your brother killed her?"

"I don't want to. I don't _want_ to think it. But what else? _Who_ else? I...I know what I did. I knew what I was risking, and I did it anyway, and now some girl who never hurt anybody in her whole life..."

"Zack," Squall said his name firmly, leaning in close to him, "that's enough."

"W-what?"

"This isn't your fault," he spoke before he could let himself think better of it, "None of this. Your brother, whatever happened to him, whatever he's done, he did _not_..."

A stab in the heart. A jolt of pain, quick, short, but enough to rock him forward on his feet. Squall grabbed suddenly onto the counter, pressed his eyes closed, tried to steady himself.

 _Not now...fuck it, not_ now _..._

"Whoa, um...are you okay?"

He felt a hand on his arm, forced his eyes open, and saw Zack looking at him, still red eyes creased in consternation.

And, just like that, it was over. It must have been barely five seconds this time.

 _Well, of course it was_ , he realized, _it was only the first offense_.

Seifer was gonna be pleased to hear from him, no doubt. Squall had been counting on him to crack first. Not that it was a game. Well, it _was_ , just not one he enjoyed playing.

"It's alright," Squall said at last, " _You're_ alright."

"But...but about my brother..."

"That stays between you and me," Squall told him firmly, "...and whoever else already knows."

"...what? I-I already told you..."

"I'm a lot of things, but I'm not stupid," he sighed, "You're not in trouble, neither are your friends. Hell, you probably _did_ think you were doing a good thing. If it had been me where you were..." he sighed, "God help me, I would've done the same thing."

Zack looked like he was about to protest again, but he relented, nodding, "It...it really isn't their fault. I convinced them..."

"You did the right thing for the wrong reasons. Call it a curse," he straightened up, "But you _have_ to keep this to yourself, alright? Promise me."

Zack was quiet for a short time before nodding, "What're you going to do?"

"My job."

Zack didn't seem entirely satisfied with this answer, which wasn't surprising, because Squall wasn't that satisfied with it either. Still, he put his hands back in his pockets, set his face into a determined line, and turned to go.

"Oh...um...it's okay about the Wheaties," he said, just short of the door.

"What..." Squall began, taking a step forward and hearing a crunch beneath his boot.

"You, um, you knocked them over, when you spazzed out."

Squall looked from the upended box to the cereal scattered over the floor, "I'll clean it up."

"No, um, you don't have to..."

"It's fine," he told him.

Squall didn't turn to make sure Zack had left, but he knew that he had when he did. Alone, he let out a monstrous sigh, reaching beneath his grimy flannel (he hadn't had time to get into uniform, he was amazed nobody had commented on the wardrobe) to feel the rough contours of the _X_ on _his_ chest.

It still felt warm, charged. He could feel his heart struggling to beat back down to normal, his pulse to stop pounding.

" _Any attempt to renege on this arrangement, to expose your purpose, to reveal to anybody what you are after and why...that's one sin."_

All he'd done was try to comfort the kid, tell him it wasn't his fault...

Maybe that was enough.

How was he supposed to do this? All the resources of the DPD at his disposal, and he couldn't even do his _job_ without worrying about setting off the ticker monitoring his vital organs.

 _Maybe that's the idea...you_ aren't _supposed to do this_.

But Hades' little Double Agent had implied otherwise. He and Seifer were _supposed_ to find the two birds, bring them to justice. Hades's whole sorry empire depended on it.

Figuring he might as well do whatever minute damage control he could manage, Squall began collecting the Wheaties from the floor to toss them out...

In doing so, revealing a white corner. Then another, a third, a fourth... A piece of paper, fallen on the floor, damp in some places with something that smelled like coffee, and here and there dotted with fresher marks.

Tears.

"Crossword," Squall muttered, reaching down to pick it up. It must have fallen from Thatch's jacket when he'd been bowled over.

Looking one way, then the other, and still feeling a weight like a stone against his heart, Squall folded the letter up and slipped it into his pocket.

* * *

One good thing about being plunged into darkness and unable to see more than an inch ahead of you...there were no distractions.

"Seven, eight, nine..." Sora counting out push-ups as naturally as if he were back in the warm-up room at Destiny High, "Ten, eleven, twelve..."

"So what're you prepping for?"

The unexpected arrival of his neighbor's voice caused Sora to stop short, mid list, dropping to lie flat on his stomach.

"You're _watching_ me?"

"Can't really watch anything. Case you haven't noticed, Lockpick...it's _dark_."

"Don't you ever _sleep_?"

"Honestly? I dunno. Nothing ever happens in this hole, who's to say I don't just pass out whenever. _This_ could all be a dream."

"I wish." Sora crawled over to the wall that separated his cell from Neku's, lifting the hem of his shirt to mop the sweat from his brow, "God, I stink."

"You notice that stuff?"

"Not usually," he said despondently, "I must be losing it."

"Not much more you have to lose, is there?" a significant pause, "Well... _is there_?"

Sora laughed dryly, "Well...I lost my team the state finals."

"That, like, a sports thing?"

Sora blinked, " _Football_. It was a big deal, would've been the first unbeaten season in..." he sighed, "Forget it," he sighed, "I lost my girlfriend too."

"That's rough."

"I mean...I don't know, I haven't been keeping track, but maybe she's locked up here too. Maybe they're _all_ locked up here and my trip to Underground Mafia Hell was all just a giant waste of time."

"Might be."

"What, a waste of time?"

"Your girl...she might be here."

Sora turned to the wall, feeling hot breath through the opening, "How many are people _are_ there?"

"You asking me?"

"You just said she _might_ be here."

"She might, she might not. This place's more crowded than it looks. And there's girls. A lot of them."

"How do you know it's girls?"

There was a long silence, "You'll figure it out."

Sora groaned, "That's it? I can't even get _one_ straight answer?"

"Might wanna check who you're getting the answers from."

"Fine," Sora shrugged, knowing Neku couldn't see him, "So...help me out. What about you? Where do you come from, what are _you_ doing here?"

"Ah...you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Wanna try me?"

"You gonna stop asking?"

"I have _literally_ nothing else to do, so no."

"You can keep with the push-ups till your legs give out."

Sora leaned his head against the wall, "I'm not _that_ big a meathead. Come on, you can't just _say_ all this stuff and then not _tell_ me anything."

"Who says?"

"You're the one who started talking to me in the first place! I wouldn't even know you were there, otherwise."

"And you'd like that better? Just sitting here in the dark, staring at nothing...not knowing I'm right on the other side of the wall?"

"I'm getting the impression that the joy of conversation is pretty frigging overrated, so yeah, I'd probably be fine."

There was a silence before Neku said, "Yeah. Probably."

Sora just sat there, eyes closed, feeling the exhaustion, the strain on all his muscles. He was hungry too, he was just noticing. It had been, what, two days without food? Or maybe he'd been fed through a tube or something when he was out cold.

They needed him alive...didn't they?

Maybe if he just sat like this, doing nothing, for long enough, he'd just pass out, go to sleep, a long, beautiful sleep. He couldn't remember the last time he felt comfortable enough to just _sleep_.

Before too long, a new sound crept into the back of his mind. A low breathing noise, uneven, shaky, barely audible, but getting steadily louder.

"Neku?" he asked, getting no answer, "You...you okay?"

"No worse off than you."

"But then, if that's not you..."

Another noise joined the first. The same kind of wracked breath, soft sobs, quiet moans.

"I told ya," said Neku somberly, "There's girls here."

The two crying women were joined by a third, as if responding to the others, then a fourth, a fifth...

"Why are they crying?"

"I dunno. Why aren't _we_ crying?"

It was a chorus of weeping, unending, on and on. Sora found himself listening, trying to recognize a voice, some familiar tone in all the cries.

"Kairi?" he found himself asking, crawling forward to the door, "Kairi, you there? It's me! It's Sora, I'm..." he trailed off, "I'm here."

No answer. Sora slammed his hand against the door, "I'm here! I went looking for you and...and...and I guess I kinda gave up on finding you, but...but I'm _here_ now."

With a start, he realized he was crying too, "I'm sorry."

He got no answer but the weeping, on and on, some song with no beginning and no end.

"I'd tell you it gets easier," said Neku bitterly, "But I'd be lying."

Sora paid him no mind, pressing his face against the cold steel of the door, feeling tears mix with the sweat on his face, dripping down to the floor, the cries of so many faceless women reverberating in his head like the tolling of a bell.

* * *

The sudden hush from the dispatch was his first clue something was amiss. All night, up until now, these wee hours of the morning, the station had been awash in activity. Forensics reports from the scene of Marluxia's murder, one more update from the incident on the Sunset Line, plus some buzz over an unidentified mystery girl who'd just shown up over in Destiny.

Saix's first thought was that Squall would at least have his hands as full as his and Yuffie's, before he remembered Squall could very well still be in the Underworld.

He wondered how gruff, cold, by-the-book Detective Leonhart would feel if he knew the corners Saix had cut, the liberties he'd taken, the all-out ass he'd made of Yuffie. Then he found himself wondering why he cared. Squall probably wouldn't.

Good for him.

But yeah, back to something being amiss. The sudden hush was soon alleviated by soft conversation. He recognized Tifa's voice, "Yes, of course. He's right in the rec room..."

Saix reflexively took in his surroundings: the peach-painted walls, the cracked formica dining table, the countertop littered with condiment bottles in varying degrees of emptiness, and what looked like a Connect-Four rig that had been abandoned mid-game, all crowned with a glossy motivational poster advertising ' _CRIME RESTS FOR NO ONE! **COFFEE!**_ '

The voices had been supplanted by footsteps. Saix leaned forward in his chair, one hand resting on the edge of the table, expecting to be confronted with a miniature lynch mob, if he was lucky, maybe some badge-wearing villagers wielding rotten vegetables.

Tifa opened the door. Saix noted the dark circles under her eyes, the forced rigidity of her posture. She'd forced herself awake all night, same as him. Though, presumably, she'd been _doing_ something all that time.

"Visitor for you.."

"Visitor?" asked Saix.

"I'd mind my manners," she stepped aside in the doorway, allowing the tall, thin man she was accompanying to enter past her.

"Thank you, Detective," thin, almost invisible lips pursed into a perpetual state of disapproval moved even as he avoided turning beady, birdlike eyes onto her, "That'll be all."

Tifa didn't look necessarily pleased at being addressed like a servant. Saix had to admit, he didn't feel much pity for her. He didn't feel much besides a single, burning anger, steadily welling up in his gut, slowly poisoning each of his limbs, forcing him in place.

Tifa, of course, didn't notice, only nodding deferentially and leaving the room, closing the door behind her.

The visitor stood there, impeccably clad in a black silk suit, his only concession to flair a violet necktie. He scrutinized Saix down the length of his hooked nose, his eyes seeming to examine every inch of him, even while seeming to barely move.

"Well?" he prompted.

And, like clockwork, before Saix could even process it, he'd gotten to his feet with an automatic immediacy, looking at the man across the table as those thin lips curled into an unmistakable sneer.

"Hello, Mayor Frollo."

The mayor chuckled under his breath, "Such formality. Should I be flattered?"

Saix said nothing. Frollo seemed determined to continue anyway, regardless, "You weren't expecting me, were you?"

"I'm here on a case. It's not a _visit_."

"A case?" Frollo looked around the room, "And a fine job you've made of it. I understand you've been put into 'time out', as it were."

Saix felt his hands tighten on the edge of the table, a motion not lost on Frollo, who laughed softly.

"Still mastering that temper? I thought this career choice would have tempered things somewhat."

"You'd be surprised."

"Would I?" he began to pace up and down the rec room, "Pray tell."

"I do my job. I always have."

"Is that the reason for your solitary confinement?" another low laugh, "Oh...I suppose it's no surprise. You never _could_ keep from dispensing mercy to the riffraff..."

"She's not..." Saix began, explosively, trailing off as he saw the smirk on the mayor's face. He forced himself to take a breath, realizing his hands were shaking, "That's not what happened."

"The girl is accused of _murder_ , but why stick to the rule of law you are _sworn_ to defend when an old friend is on the line?"

"She's not an..."

"I know very well what she was, boy. What she _is_ ," Frollo stood across the table, nose inch-to-inch with Saix's own, "You fancied yourself very clever back then, running off in the night to while away your days with street urchins and motorcycle thugs, but you could _never_ deceive me. Surely, by now you've realized that?"

Saix balled his hands up at his sides, "I left, didn't I?"

"You _ran away_ ," he sniffed dismissively, "I must confess, when I heard you'd become a policeman, I was surprised. Dare I say, proud?"

"I don't remember receiving a Christmas card to that effect."

"Would you have read it if there had been one?" Frollo tutted dryly, "Never mind, now. You can put a mane on a cat, that doesn't make it a lion, no more than a badge makes a boy a man."

"Is that why you're here?" Saix demanded softly, "Take it out on me, not being _man_ enough? Forget whatever I did tonight, you've been rehearsing this speech for years, haven't you?"

"You're a petulant child," Frollo snarled, "I always knew that. Hoped, perhaps, that with some _direction_ that would change, you'd harden a little, learn some responsibility."

"You have no idea. Of course you don't, you never _wanted_ to know, you were fine pretending to knew the whole story..."

"The story? You mean your little summer fantasy, your dreams of teenage rebellion...they were just that, Isa. Dreams."

"Don't," Saix shook his head, "Don't you call me that..."

"It's your _name_ , boy, and I gave it to you. You can run from it all you like, but changing a name doesn't change the thing..."

Saix lunged across the table, not even thinking, grasping wildly at Frollo's jacket. But he moved too quickly, and Saix lost faith too fast. Before he knew it, he was sprawled out over the table, his arm held out in front of him in a vice grip, Frollo's eyes bearing down on him.

"I thought as much," he said in a voice both barely audible and yet, somehow, ringing in Saix's ears, "Still branded like cattle."

"Is everything alright?" Saix heard the door opening, Tifa's voice, as if a thousand miles away, "I heard..."

"Quite alright," Frollo had already let go of Saix's wrist, turning to look at Tifa with his usual bloodless smile, "Merely a family reunion. You understand."

"...oh," Tifa looked more confused than she had when she walked in, but Frollo was already brushing out past her.

"Give Commissioner Harvey my regards."

And he was gone, not paying Saix another glance as he left. Tifa closed the door behind him, looking queasy.

Saix found he was hyperventilating, slumped over the table. His hand was shaking, the one Frollo had grabbed, the image of the crescent moon faint, but still present on his skin.

"I...I don't..." Tifa began, "He's your _father_?"

Saix looked at her, "You didn't _ask_ why he was so interested to see me?"

"He's the _Mayor_ , and he doesn't exactly take no..."

"You don't have to tell me," he said dryly, forcing himself to his feet.

"I...I just...I didn't know he _had_ any kids."

"He doesn't," said Saix, "Not anymore."

Tifa sighed, wringing her hands, "I'm sorry. If I had known..."

"Yeah, well...you were just doing your job."

She crossed her arms, "Don't think I'm not sympathetic. I know how hard it is, juggling life with this job."

"Is that what I'm doing? Juggling? Cause it feels like I've dropped a couple of balls."

Tifa opened her mouth like she wanted to say more, but whatever it was she thought better of it, and turned to go. Saix stayed leaning against the table, feeling his hot breath passing through clenched teeth. He waited until he heard the door close, footsteps retreating.

He was alone again.

With a wordless cry, Saix slammed his hand against the table, knocked the chair beside him to the ground. Shoulders shaking, his face burning up, he got down on his knees, pressed his eyes shut, and let the anger poison him.

* * *

Her dreams were humid, lush and green, drenched in the scent of wildflowers, mountain air, torrential rain. It was stale and sterile now, but imagining the cool mist on her face sustained her, made her feel alive.

She _was_ alive. Wasn't she? Sometimes she wasn't sure.

Peru seemed so real. The jungle, the Andes, stark slate gray against vibrant green, the pristine blue sky. Like heaven. Perhaps this _was_ death...the most lovely place in the whole world, just with none of those stinging ants and shrieking bats in the night.

But she could never _fully_ believe in Peru. The pain was too much, every inch of her feeling broken, jagged, beaten to bits. Truly, it had stopped _hurting_ quite in that way. Maybe she was used to it. Maybe it would never end.

Maybe this _was_ death. The illusion of beauty and the reality of pain. Perhaps there was no weighing of the scales, no final judgment. You just got handed a bit of both sides. Forever.

How delightfully neat. She wished she could approve. She wished she could do _anything_.

Sensation did not change very often. Sometimes it felt like there was different air on her. Something hotter or colder, but this passed quickly. Then there were voices, rarely, and so indistinct they may as well have been imagined. They certainly never spoke clearly enough for her to understand.

This went on for some time. She couldn't even properly call it a routine because of how erratic it was, how strange, surreal, unpredictable, yet so dull.

She was not sure how much time had passed before the music began to play. Flutes and fiddles. A woman's voice...she believed she'd heard it somewhere before.

" _When you're lost in the rain in Juarez, and it's Easter time too/And your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through..._ "

Judy Collins. Her father used to play this record all the time, on long, arid digs. Some people longed for adventure, he always told her, but they could not come to grips with the cruelty of the world.

" _Don't put on any airs down on Rue Morgue Avenue/They got some hungry women there and they really make a mess out of you..._ "

Perhaps this whole time she'd been dying, and this was the final clarion call for death. Her father's favorite song, about the optimistic New York painter in a world he thought he could own, but refused to understand.

" _Now if you see Saint Annie, please tell her thanks a lot/I cannot move, my fingers are all in a knot_..."

"Are you okay?"

Words. Actual, distinct speech. And breath against her face. Someone was nearby. Someone _living_ , breathing...real.

" _I don't have the strength to get up and take another shot/And my best friend the doctor won't even say what I've got..._ "

She felt a hand on her face...her _face_ , she still had a face. It could be touched, it _was_ being touched, gently, smoothly.

"God, they must've really done a number on you, huh?"

" _Sweet Melinda_ , _they call her the goddess of gloom/She speaks good English and invites you up into her room..._ "

With a flutter so quick, so airy, it seemed almost mockingly effortless, Jane opened her eyes. The world was white, clean, sterile. All but for the man standing above her, his hand still lingering on her face, green eyes bright with a new hope in an angular, yet surprisingly youthful face.

Jane felt a short gasp begin in her lungs, stabbing at her insides, forcing her to keep her back down on whatever slab she was lying on. Still, the wave of recognition spread to her every inch.

"Y...you _..._ " but she couldn't form a word, she could barely move her lips.

" _And you're so kind and careful not to go to her too soon/And she takes your voice and leaves you howling at the moon_..."

He withdrew his hand, pushing a strand of silver hair behind his ear, "I look familiar? Yeah. I guess...well, maybe we've met before? I don't really know. I...I don't know a lot. Forgot it." he lowered his head, sighed, "Everything's really familiar, but it's also so... _different_. I feel like I should know something, recognize, remember..."

 _He doesn't know who he is_.

" _Up on Housing Project Hill it's either fortune or fame/You must pick one or the other but neither of them are what they claim_..."

"Ri..." she tried to speak, realizing that she couldn't much move her neck either, or any of her limbs, "ku. Riku."

He turned back to look at her, suddenly standing straight. He stared, not moving an inch, not even blinking.

"Wh...what?" he asked at last, in a tiny voice. Before Jane could even attempt forcing another word out, he shook his head, "No...no, that's not, that's not..."

He swayed a little on his feet, pressing one hand to his head, "Please," he said softly, begging, "Please, don't..."

And then he was on top of her, hands on her throat. Jane let out a scream that cut like a thousand daggers, feeling herself falling from where she'd been placed.

She tried to fight back, tried to beat him off, but her arms were bound, bandaged, she couldn't move them even if she wanted. His fingers tightened on her throat, his eyes looking into hers, not so much green now as a crisp, dark gold...

The fringes of her vision began to blur, to fade, ebbing away. No visions of the Andes, of the jungle...just darkness, emptiness.

And then the eyes above her were green again, green, wide, filled with a dawning horror. Jane felt the back of her head hard against the floor. She let out a gasp of pain, watching as the boy who'd tried to kill her was pulled away, dragged off in the arms of some huge, lantern-jawed man in uniform.

"That's enough," he said shortly, pressing two fingers against the side of Riku's neck, "Enough."

And the eyes closed, an expression of wordless terror still on that face. He fell against the floor like a rag doll.

The man looked her over, "I am sorry for that."

Jane could not move to resist as he picked up her bandaged body in two hands, carrying her back to the cot, the bed, wherever she'd been lying.

"What..." she tried, "What's..."

"You're very hurt," he said simply, "And you need your rest."

"No..." she pleaded, watching him turn to go, "Please! Please, don't..."

But he was gone. And Jane was left alone, just her and Tom Thumb's Blues, playing on as if to taunt her.

" _I started out on burgundy, but soon hit the harder stuff/Everybody said they'd stand behind me when the game got rough/But the joke was on me, there was nobody even here to bluff/I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough._ "

* * *

 **A/N:** You guys didn't think I'd get rid of a POV character with such little ceremony, did you?

I hope you guys liked the chapter. I'm at a point in the story where there's so much going on, and so many things from earlier come back or take on new meaning. It's a challenge making sure it all weaves together appropriately, but I hope it's come out well.

Chapter 25 will be up next Friday! See you then.


	25. Missed Communications

Chapter 25, Missed Communications

 **A/N:** And welcome back to Radiant Creatures. It's a new day in Radiant County, with new troubles and new adventures for our plucky crew. Hope you like it!

* * *

Selphie didn't know why Mother was always worrying about Wakka's diet. One second in his car was all it took to know how much he loved his veggies.

"Can we lower a window, at least?" she asked in a high, strained voice, the better to keep from breathing in the stench of the devil's AstroTurf before homeroom.

"Why? We're almost there."

"Fat lot of good 'almost there' is gonna do if I choke to death."

"You askin' me, you oughta take a big whiff in. You'll feel better."

"Is that what you do when you've been up all night being questioned by the cops and you only got thirty minutes of sleep?"

"That last one, yeah," but Wakka did turn to look at her, running a red light in the process, which was little comfort to her, "You know, you don't _have_ to go to school, yeah? If they don't let you cut after all this shit..."

"Cutting would be running away. I don't do that."

"No better time to start."

Selphie glared at him and he shrugged, "I mean it."

"That's what makes it sad," she sighed, "Sorry, that was mean."

"Sorry? Whoo shit, this _is_ getting to you."

"Don't make fun of me!" she protested, "Am I _not_ supposed to be freaked out after getting front row seats to the Corpse Posing exhibit?"

"Nah, I guess not," he hesitated, "I guess. Um..."

"Pull over here," she indicated nodding at the approaching Destiny High lot.

"I know where the school is, sis. I _did_ graduate from here."

"That remains to be proved."

The lot was already crowded. Homeroom bell was in ten minutes. She was cutting it pretty close. Normally, she would have attempted to get here earlier, not out of any love for the academic institution, but simply because all the juiciest stuff happened _before_ school. And to bum a ride off her brother? She was going through it, make no mistake.

"Still time to bail out if you wanna, Selph," Wakka told her, putting the car in park.

Selphie considered, her hand pressed against the door handle. At last, she turned back to him, "Thanks, but no thanks. I can handle it."

"'Course you can. But why should you?"

"Why should anyone?" she opened the door, letting in a cool blast of fresh, rain-drenched air, "Take care of yourself, Big Brother. Maybe get a job, make us all proud?"

"I just chauffeured you to school!"

"That's not a paid service," she winked, shouldering her schoolbag, stepping out onto the asphalt, "But really, don't let this be your _one_ good deed for the day."

"Good, huh?"

"Passable."

"You're a piece of work, sis,"

"I know," she closed the door, giving Wakka a little two fingered salute through the window, "Catch ya later."

Wakka peeled out of the parking lot, already making good on his promise by nearly rear-ending a Honda Civic on the way. Selphie stood in place, watching him go, not entirely realizing she'd gone entirely stationary until she blinked, feeling the threat of new raindrops on her forehead, a fresh, high wind against her face.

"Right," she told herself, "onward."

She wished she could delude herself into thinking this was like any other Wednesday morning, like she hadn't been up till 5:00 AM thinking about the fresh waitress tapestry in her friend's apartment, blood on the wall, the floor, the cold, official, no-bullshit questions from the cold, official no-bullshit cop who she _knew_ , just knew was onto her.

She was actually surprised she wasn't catching the morning news from the other side of a set of bars right about now.

Selphie climbed the front steps into the school, aware of people turning to look at her as she passed, heads bowed to confer in low voices. She was used to this, of course. She was _Selphie_ , the masses naturally stopped whatever they were doing to defer to her at any time.

But this was different, Selphie knew it. She wasn't an object of admiration, even the more coveted (and, let's be real, more socially expedient) envy. This was curiosity, gawking at her like some roadshow curiosity, or some freaky little animal lying dead in the gutter.

"Happy Windsday."

"Are you high?" Selphie asked, not even turning to regard Irvine as he lifted himself from the wall he was leaning against to follow her.

"What? Windsday? It's Wednesday, it's windy... They call it a portmantoo, smooshing two words together."

"How clever."

"Yeah, so did the dead chick have her tits out, or is that just fake news?"

Selphie scoffed, rolling her eyes, not slowing her pace.

"Just that me and some of the guys have this bet..."

Selphie stopped short in the middle of the hallway, turning to look at him, "Yes! Yes, she had her tits out!" she exclaimed, no care to how loud she sounded, "They were nicely offset by all the blood oozing out of her open wound. Sorry, I didn't have time to take measurements."

She broke off, breathing heavily. Irvine's eyes darted around the hall, his face seeming to vanish up within the confines of his stupid cowboy hat.

Selphie looked up and down the hall, realizing everyone who'd stopped what they were doing to look at her.

"Well?" she demanded, looking around at them all, "Back to your bullshit! Nothing to see here. Just another morning in Destiny!"

"Selphie..." Irvine began as she continued down the hall, "Hey, Selph, I'm sorry! If...if you need some..."

"Happy Windsday, asshole!" she called back to him, not looking over her shoulder.

The nerve of him. What the hell gave him the _cajones_ to even _think_ he could try anything with her, especially now. As if her being caught up in a murder investigation was some kind of quirky conversation starter.

Selphie was becoming more and more convinced everything around her was unreal, the increasingly weird, surreal, alarming chain of events. How else to explain how determinedly life seemed to be going on around her, only her and a select group of doofy losers, misfits and misbegottens noticing how _bad_ it all really was.

"Selphie!"

Speaking of misbebottomed losers...

"Good morning, Mr. Thatch," Selphie greeted her history teacher as she passed him into homeroom, "Sleep well?"

Given he looked like a hastily microwaved plate of mashed potatoes, probably not. He leaned against his desk, waxy face working as his mouth formed some soundless words, before managed to say, "Not very well, I'm afraid."

"May I recommend screaming into the void? Really gets the heart going."

"So that was _you_ I heard in the hallway?"

"I was provoked."

"I explained as much to Dean Waternoose," Milo hesitated, "He P.A'd me, wanting to speak to you."

"It's been two minutes!"

"Yes, well, I was able to talk him down," he smiled uneasily, "You've been through quite a lot."

"Oh," she blinked, "...thank you."

"It's no trouble. Frankly, I'm impressed you kids even came to school today."

"Kids?" Selphie turned to look at the desks around the room. Tidus flashed her a little peace sign from his desk, giving her an expression that was either a smile or a grimace. Next to him, Zack, still red eyed and looking as drained as Selphie felt, nodded, then quickly lowered his head, appearing to force down a puke.

Lovely.

"Nobody your age should have to be subjected to... _that_ ," he said at length.

"Yeah, well...neither should anybody _your_ age."

"Perhaps not," he sighed, "Listen, Selphie..."

Great. Nothing good ever began with 'Listen, Selphie'. You'd think the adult impulse to hand out pedantic lectures would have lessened by the onset of womanhood, but in Selphie's experience it was quite the opposite, and the lectures somehow got even more derivative.

"...I understand being frightened. And confused. Heaven knows, I'm still coming to terms with...with quite how I feel about that poor girl..."

 _Oh, shit_.

"Mr. Thatch, I really appreciate it, but I think that kinda thing's best left for the couch, if you know what I mean..."

"...but, really, in times of great conflict, it's the pack that survives. Sticking together in the face of adversity. Like the early men of Skara Brae."

"Mr. Thatch, I'm sorry to tell you this, but this is _not_ the week to check if I've been doing the reading."

"What I _mean to say,_ " he heaved a great sigh, "I know you're frightened, and confused..."

"That doesn't even scratch the surface, really..."

"But you shouldn't have taken my letter."

"What?" she stopped abruptly, "Your...your _letter_?"

He looked furtively up and down the room, somehow managing to lower his voice more than it already was, "It's no use pretending, Selphie, I know you _know_ about it, we were all together last night. Now, that letter is a coded message, and I have _not_ finished decoding it. I know we decided to keep...certain things from the police last night..."

"That was a decision? Because it felt more like a conniption fit rolled into a manic episode."

"It is expressly important that letter not fall into the wrong hands!" he said desperately, "Selphie, I know you're upset about what happened, and I know Zack is your friend..."

"Yeah, he is. What's the point?"

"You're not protecting anybody holding onto that letter. Selphie, lives are at stake..."

The homeroom bell rang. Selphie shrugged, "I'll consider myself saved. Thanks, Mr. Thatch."

"Selphie..." he began, but she'd already started over to her desk.

"What the hell was that about?" Tidus asked before she'd even sat down.

"Are you okay? What did he ask you? You're not in trouble, are you?" asked Zack.

"Do you need Irvine's ass kicked, because I'm in the mood...

"I'm not sure, no, give me a second, probably not, and maybe later," Selphie answered each question in a row, putting her bag down on the floor by her feet.

She looked from one boy to the other, casting another glance at Thatch, who was clearing his throat, fumbling for the attendance list.

"The Nutty Professor thinks I took his coded message."

"He what?" asked Tidus.

"That letter, the one in the secret code."

"The one that told him Cloud was a murderer," Zack muttered, "Jeez."

"But you didn't, did you?"

Selphie shook her head, "What's the point? It's not like he ever _finished_ cracking it."

"Who's the letter from?" asked Zack, "Did he tell you?"

Selphie shook her head, "I think he thinks we're trying to protect Cloud. If that letter says he killed someone, then it's evidence."

" _Aren't_ we protecting Cloud?" asked Tidus, "I mean...it's not like we told that cop what we know. Right?"

Selphie shook her head, "I thought we were agreed. No more sniping about that."

Zack had gotten very quiet. Feeling a stab of pity for him, Selphie added, "It's not your fault, Zack."

"No," said Tidus, though it didn't sound like he meant it, "Of course not."

"It's not that..." he sighed, "I just don't get it."

"Welcome to the club," Tidus leaned back in his chair, flinching a bit as he did so.

"You okay?" asked Selphie. He nodded, "Just banged my knee running up those stairs. It's fine."

"You sure?" prompted Zack. Tidus glared at him, "Yes, Mother."

Selphie rolled her eyes, turning back to Zack, "You were saying?"

He nodded, "I just...I keep thinking about Cloud and Aerith. I can't understand why he'd do this."

"Guys kill their girlfriends all the time," said Tidus. Selphie gave him a look and he added, "What? It's true."

"Comforting."

"Well, I didn't mean like..."

"If Cloud _did_ do that, and then he ran off...I just don't see where he'd go."

"That reminds me," began Selphie, "Where did _you_ go?"

"What?"

"Well, last night...your apartment being a crime scene and all."

Zack sighed, "I...um...I crashed at Amphitrite's place. I mean, she spent the night at the hospital and...well, I have an extra key, so..."

"Fascinating, I'm glad we've got that clear," said Tidus, "Why can't we just forget about Cloud. Really?"

"Tidus..."

"Seriously? He killed his girlfriend and ran away. He's gone," he looked at Zack, "I'm sorry, man, but that's how it is."

"And we're supposed to let him get away? We..." he stopped himself, " _I'm_ the one that decided to hide him. If...if someone else gets killed."

"So what? You want us to catch him?"

"Zack, don't be silly," said Selphie, "The cops will handle this."

"The cops don't _know_ him."

"Neither do you," said Tidus, "You've basically admitted he's not the guy he was back then."

"No. But there's something, I know it. Something I'm missing. Guys, I'm not asking you to go along with me on this..."

"Good," grumbled Tidus.

"...but if I don't try to stop him..."

"Alright, Philistines and Phoenicians," Thatch announced clearly, holding the attendance list up, "I regret to inform you all that, despite the...adventures of yesterday..." he faltered, a bit of green lighting up his gills, "...the world keeps on turning."

"And turning and turning," said Selphie, looking from Tidus to Zack, one reproachfully and one, she felt regretfully.

Though it pained her that she felt more one way than the other.

* * *

The city came alive in her dreams. Flashing neon signs blinking down from shop windows, the smell of baked nuts and hot coffee from kiosks along the street. A hundred tiny bulbs strong on wires from shop to shop, crisscrossing over cobblestone paths like so many fireflies suspended in space.

The air was chilly, yet weirdly warm, scented with cinnamon and nutmeg. Winter smells, anticipating the cold.

" _It's so beautiful_ ," her words were soft, enchanted. _She_ was enchanted, and living an impossible life. She should have known then that it would not, could not last.

" _You think so?,_ " even now, his smile was a comfort to her, the flushed pink in his cheeks, the almost bashful, yet oddly proud curve of his smile, " _Geez, I wasn't even trying._ "

His arm was warm, solid against her shoulders. She felt anchored, grounded in this soft, fuzzy dreamworld.

It was a dream, wasn't it? That's why it felt so safe.

She was sick of safety.

She opened her eyes, feeling her lashes almost cling to each other, parting reluctantly. A harsh fluorescent light beat down on her eyes, as if trying to force them shut again. But she resisted the impulse.

Her mother was sitting next to her bed, on a hastily rolled out cot, head balanced on one arm. She _was_ her mother, wasn't she? Older, thinner, her once rich auburn hair gone to gray. It was sad, and a little scary as well.

Could it be true, then? What they were all saying? Those snatches of hushed conversation that had crept into all those hours of sleep? Time had gone on, or perhaps it _had_ been going on.

There was a soft beeping nose. Medical machinery, ticking off on some invisible pulse. She need only turn a little to the side to see the clear tube strung out from her arm, some equally clear fluid being steadily pumped into her.

The sight of it made her sick, queasy. She pressed one hand to her mouth, began to quietly retch.

"Namine?" a stirring from the cot beside her, her mother was sitting up, putting her legs out over the side, "Namine, dear..."

She turned to look at her, feeling her eyes begin to sting, "M-mother?"

It still didn't feel real. Judging from the look on the woman's face, it was no different for her. She reached out, put a staying hand on her arm.

"You must have a thousand questions, and Lord knows, I have a thousand more. There'll be time, I promise you. You just sit here."

"But..."

"I'm to fetch the doctor at the first sign of life. By God, you _are_ alive," she smiled, which was a shock enough both for its familiarity and its rarity. Her mother was not a woman known for easy smiles, as radiant as they might be when she did attempt them.

"I'll be right back. So help me, I'll be getting you out of here as fast as I can manage."

"But..."

But nothing. She was already gone. Namine sighed, sitting the rest of the way up in her bed. There were no windows in this room, but she got the impression it was morning. She'd slept the day away, if really it had been sleep. Everything was just so hazy, so confused. There seemed almost nothing at all between the warm light of those narrow streets, the spices in the air, and this cold, empty white space.

They'd probably try to make her remember. Namine supposed that would be a good thing, and yet a part of her didn't want to remember. There could be nothing good lying in that big blank space. Not if the reality around her was truly _real_.

Her mother, old, withered, reduced. Her usually serene, solid figure falling apart at the merest sign of life from her. Everybody and everything strange, foreign, the world appearing to her as if viewed through some frosted glass. Indistinct, foggy. Fake.

Nobody seemed likely to tell her this any time soon, but she knew. She'd slept away a lifetime, like some fairy tale princess under a curse. Only her return wasn't awash in celebration and joy, but fear and consternation. Uncertainty and trepidation.

 _You should be dead_.

The realization hit her suddenly, without warning. A frank thought that barely felt like a thought, like some other voice was whispering to her from one of those mammoth monitors making sure she _was_ , in fact, alive.

She began to cry, then. Softly sobbing, lifting her hand to her face to stifle the noise. It wouldn't do to be seen like this, she'd have to explain why, and she didn't want to explain, not when she had no explanations to give...

"It's true, then."

A shadow fell over the doorway, but she didn't need that to know someone had joined her. The voice was enough: rich and full, it seemed to warm every inch of her, and make her skin prickle all at once.

"I didn't want to believe it," he was a man, tall and broad, with an air of confidence that he must have put together from scratch. And yet, the soft set to his eyes, the hesitant tremor to his lips, indicated there was a bit of the boy she'd known beneath all that as well.

"But here you are."

She wiped away her tears, nodding and finding that, when she spoke, her words were tiny and choked with the threat of more tears, "Here I am."

And his mouth split into the smile she remembered so well, true and boyish, teeth bared, "Nami?"

"Xem," she smiled back, "I guess I've missed a lot."

And he crossed the room in two strides, wrapping his arms around her in an embrace, "It is you. Oh my God, you're back."

"Please don't ask me how," she told him, pulling a little away, "I won't be able to tell you."

Xemnas nodded, "Then I won't ask. But...but you must have so many questions."

"A few. My mother's being really great...well, I mean, I think she is. I haven't really spoken to her. Or...anyone."

She looked him up and down. He looked much the same as she remembered him. Sturdier, maybe, with more of an air of refinement, of confidence. There was less shyness to him.

"Nice suit," she pointed out, indicating the black blazer, the silver tie.

"Oh..." he plucked at the jacket, as if foraging for invisible dust motes, "Thank you."

"I guess you surrendered to the corporate machine, after all?"

Xemnas managed another smile, but it was even less steady than the last. There was a noticeable constraint to his voice, "Don't believe I didn't fight it."

"But you're happy now?"

It was a while before he answered, "You're here. That's all the happiness I need."

"I _am_ here," she agreed, "And, as far as I can figure, still 17 years old."

Xemnas sighed, lowering his head a little, "You want to know..."

"Please. I'd ask my Mother, but she wouldn't tell me, you know her. She'd never let me know, she'd think she was protecting me," she begged softly, "Please, Xemnas. How much time?"

He didn't answer at once, but he did, at length, say, "21 years."

She let out a breath, feeling the tears on her lashes.

"I'm sorry, Namine," he told her, "Truly, I am...so sorry."

" _How_?" she asked, "I don't understand. It's like...like some huge gap in my memory. Like I blinked once, and...and the whole world changed."

"It's not fair," he told her eventually, "I wish there was something..."

"You came to see me. That's enough. If it really has been that long...well, a lot of people might not have thought it."

He smiled sadly, "I could never forget you. I never have," he sighed, "Namine..."

" _You_ ," the word was hissed out with a downright frightening touch of venom, "How _dare_ you?"

Xemnas closed his eyes, letting out a sigh between his teeth as he got back to his feet at Namine's bedside, "Amphitrite."

"Mother," Namine began, watching where her mother stood in the doorway, closely followed by a sallow-faced, oddly hatted doctor, "please..."

"I must admit," Amphitrite paid Namine little notice, her eyes only for Xemnas, "I'm impressed at your gall. Most monsters prefer to stick to cover of darkness."

"I only wanted to see her," Xemnas's tone had reverted to stiff, businesslike, formal, "See if it was true."

"Well, you've seen her. You shan't see her again."

"Amphitrite..."

"I've taken some lumps in my time, swallowed enough pride, but God as my witness, I still have enough _clout_ in this sorry town to have you dragged from this hospital and barred at the door! Don't think I won't try it!"

"Mother, please!" Namine pleaded, but Xemnas stopped her.

"It's alright. You'll be needing your rest."

With one last look to her, a barely visible smile, he was gone. The doctor let out a long breath, "Quite a show. If there was any doubt you were alive before, that's over now."

He set to busying himself with a notepad, as if preparing for some exam. Namine leaned back against the pillow as Amphitrite lowered herself next to her.

"I am sorry for that," she said.

"Does that mean I get an explanation? For...for _anything_?"

"You need your rest," she said firmly, "And before you sort out anything about this sorry world, we have to sort you out first."

"You _still_ hate him," she scoffed, "It's just...I don't know why I'm surprised. It's like everything's changed and nothing's changed all at the same time."

"It's fairly more complicated than that," she sighed, "My dear, you don't know what this has _done_ to me. I...I thought you were gone. Forever."

"How?" Namine asked, "Gone _how_ , Mother?"

She stopped short, looking on, her eyes bright and watery. No answer left her lips, which was all Namine needed to know.

"Oh my God..."

"It's...it's not quite..."

"Oh my God," and the tears came again, in earnest, "I wasn't...I couldn't have been..."

"Namine..."

"Where's Dad?" she asked abruptly, the thought suddenly occurring to her, "Mother, where is Dad?"

Amphitrite was quiet, "My dear..."

And she broke down as well, crying with her, a weight like nothing Namine had ever known descending on her shoulders.

Or at least, a weight like nothing she could remember.

* * *

The tape ran in close circles, ticking on in a rhythmic, consistent pattern. Maybe it was just Squall's neuroses catching up, but ticking noises were starting to creep into everything.

Sighing, he picked up his pen, gave a quick glance at the one-way window to give some verisimilitude to the audience, and then returned to the sham that his job had become.

"This is Detective Squall Leonhart, Destiny Police Department, in conference with the suspect Seifer Almasy. The date is Wednesday November 17th. It's 10:30 A.M. This interview is being tape recorded."

"You don't say?"

Squall narrowed his eyes, "Name?" he asked tersely.

"You just said it for the tape."

Squall gritted his teeth, "You know how this works."

And he did. Clearly it was more convincing to just go on being a glib asshole, as usual. Less suspicious that way.

"Seifer Almasy."

"And let the record show, Mr. Almasy..."

"Seifer's fine."

Squall glared, but Seifer just kept on smiling like an idiot, "Well, it's not like I ain't done this before."

" _Let the record show_ that you have chosen not to contact an attorney. Right, Mr. Almasy?"

Seifer nodded, "I don't trust lawyers. Nine times out of ten, you ain't done nothing and it's your lawyer gets you hung up for it anyway."

"You understand that anything you tell me here may be presented as evidence in court?"

"I didn't figure you were just interested in me, no."

"May the record also show," Squall resisted the urge to look toward the window, aware of the particular significance of this point, "That Mr. Almasy is not, at this point, formally charged with any crime, but was apprehended under suspicion."

"That's a load of bull and you know it!" Seifer cried out, too loudly, leaning forward in his chair.

 _Really trying for the Golden Globe now, isn't he?_

"Mr. Almasy," Squall spoke over him, slowly and deliberately, "I must ask you to compose yourself."

Seifer broke off at once, smiling as if satisfied. Squall wondered if he remembered they were being watched as well as listened in on, and decided that Seifer knew this, and was deciding it wouldn't do any harm to either of their images if he looked like a cheeky asshole.

Probably had a point.

"Mr. Almasy, perhaps you will state for the record..."

"But not for you?" he grinned, "What, you're suddenly off my case?"

"...what you were doing in the vicinity of the Elysian Fields Hotel and Casino on the night of Saturday, November 13th of this year."

"What does anybody do at a hotel and casino? I _casined_."

"You gambled?"

Seifer blinked. Perhaps he wasn't aware 'casined' was not a verb...or anything. Eventually, he regained himself enough to add, "They've got a gambling license, don't they? They don't, you take it up with them..."

Squall gave him a look, and Seifer just smiled back. Squall wished he could have full faith that he'd remember to present his statements as they'd prepared, that too much hinged on them failing, that the slightest misstep would ruin them. He knew Seifer wasn't stupid, but it had never been stupidity that was his problem, so much as a willful disregard for his own safety. And the safety of others.

"Do you often patronize Elysian Fields?"

"Now and again, when I've got the time."

"And your line of work allows for these frequent trips?"

Seifer shrugged, Squall noticing that he had become somewhat shifty eyed. He repressed a sigh, locking eyes with Seifer to remind him of his purpose.

"You're asking if I'm rich or something?"

"I was asking if you were financially able to keep up your casino visits," Squall answered firmly.

"'Cuz a guy's got the be rich to piss his money away, is that it?" Seifer snorted, "Come on."

"You're dodging my question."

"I'm telling you I don't got money to burn. What, you wanna know where I work too?"

Squall bristled. He could almost imagine Ratcliff watching through the window, practically salivating at the thought of another Earthshaker in his custody. And not just any Earthshaker...

"That was the nature of my question, yes."

"Then you coulda just _asked_ it."

"I'm asking now. Your work?"

"You already know what I do, Leon."

Squall leaned over the table, knowing Seifer was goading him, just like always, even now, "Let's assume for a moment that your lifestyle choices have _changed_. That neither I, nor anyone else at this department know what you do. How would you describe the nature of your work."

Seifer was quiet for a while, that smile still plastered on his face, "Unemployed."

Squall leaned back in the chair, "Unemployed?"

"Do mechanic work sometimes, freelance. Ask around, I've got a pretty good rep."

"You maintain you don't have any official employment?"

"Well, I belong to a _club_ if you're interested in that sorta thing."

"A club?" Squall asked, hoping he didn't sound as exhausted as he felt.

"Earthshaker Motorcycle Club, Destiny Chapter. I'm president, matter of fact, funny story how that happened really..."

"Let the record show that Mr. Almasy has admitted his involvement with the social organization known as the Earthshakers."

Maybe he was just imagining it, but the one-mirror was getting a little misty. Ratcliff must have his lips pressed up against the glass with excitement.

"Nothin' illegal about belonging to a _club_ now, is there?" asked Seifer.

Squall continued, "You've been president of the Destiny Chapter for how long?"

"Don't you already have this stuff on a tape or fifty? Hell, man, couldn't you write a _book_?"

"For the record."

"What am I being charged with again?" Seifer leaned forward, "That's right. Nothing. You said."

"You aren't at liberty to answer any of my questions."

"Looks like you forgot to say that before," Seifer shrugged, "Sloppy, sloppy, Leon."

Shit. Squall let out a short breath, "If you're as familiar with this process as you claim, that shouldn't be a problem. Or have I made you answer anything against your will?"

Seifer was quite for some time before shaking his head, "Nah. You know how it is, Leon. You and me... _simpacito_."

" _Simpatico_?"

"S'what I said," Seifer drummed his fingers against the tabletop, "Five years. More or less."

"That you've been president?"

"That I've been sitting here dealing with your bullshit. Yeah, since I been president. Don't you remember, Leon? You were there?"

Squall looked at the tape deck, back at the window, then to Seifer, "You say you often patronize Elysian Fields. Do you go alone?"

Seifer shrugged.

"Shrugging doesn't show up on tape."

"You don't say?" he shrugged again, "Earthshakers are like my family. You take _your_ family to the craps table?"

"Are they aware of these trips?"

For the first time, there was some real hesitation in Seifer's manner, a reticence. Squall wondered who he was trying to protect: the 'family' he'd been grifting for all this time, or himself.

"I don't advertise it, no. Man needs his privacy every once in a while, don't he?"

There seemed to be a warning tone in his voice, like this time it was Seifer trying to keep Squall from pushing too far. As if Squall owed it to him to protect the Earthshakers, as if he got anything out of this phony interview, this stupid charade. Anything but an extended chance to throw everything he stood for in the trash, all so so he could do some other lowlife's dirty work...

 _As if that's your only stake in this_ , he told himself, _you know exactly what you're doing_.

Didn't make it any easier, or make him feel any better.

"Let the record show," Squall continued in a measured tone, "That I was present at Elysian Fields on the night in question, in my capacity as an undercover operative, my directive being to uncover any connection between the disappearance of two adolescent boys at the Destiny town limits on the night of Thursday, November 11th."

"Call it a chance meeting." Seifer said easily, "Wouldn't say either of us is any better for it."

He winked at Squall, a gesture so overt Squall was tempted to respond with a gesture of his own. Maybe a punch in the throat.

Instead, latent anger still burning in his gut, Squall proceeded, "Mr. Almasy, where were _you_ on the evening of the 11th?"

"I thought we were talking about two evenings later?"

"Those were the circumstances of our meeting."

"I thought I was arrested for those circumstances."

Again, Squall wasn't sure if Seifer was being intentionally evasive for the sake of the act, or if he'd decided to rebel, though in this instance Squall didn't think that was going to serve Seifer very well at all.

"You were taken into custody for your connection to the circumstances of that evening."

"Which evening?"

"The 11th."

"Then why ask about the 13th in the first place?"

"Will you explain to me what you were doing on the 11th?"

"I don't have to."

"So you won't?"

"Not that it matters, don't it? Your mind's made up. You know _exactly_ what I was doing."

Squall tensed, he gave Seifer the most explicit warning look he could manage, but that didn't stop him, "You guys have always been out for us. Always. We don't even have to do anything. You wonder why we don't trust the cops? One of us gets robbed, beat, shot at, _killed_...we're still suspects. You know why the Earthshakers started, Leon?" Seifer chuckled, "You should."

"That's immaterial."

"It's _the_ material," Seifer drummed his fingers against the table, dangerously close to the recorder, as if to cause static, distortion for the playback, "We were started up to _protect_ the little guy, the guy that gets kicked out of his job, can't pay his rent, who've got the cops breathing down his _neck_ while all the _rich_ guys get richer on their backs."

"Is that why you started dealing heroin?" Squalled asked loudly, unable to control himself, "Why you threw in with a known criminal organization to distribute drugs to teenagers? Taking care of the little guy, keeping the rich guy from getting richer?"

"That had _nothing_ to do with me," said Seifer shortly, "You should know, you were there."

"The record will note," said Squall deliberately, "that Seifer Almasy was brought up in connection to a drug distribution ring between the Earthshakers and the Styx and Stones five years ago..."

"I helped you take down that ring!"

"...resulting in the death of an..."

" _I_ didn't kill her!" Seifer roared, his words echoing in their confined space, "They..."

He lurched, nearly falling against the table, face suddenly reddening. Before Squall could move, he felt it too, another jolt, rocking him in his chair. It was a little longer than the last one, more sustained. Squall felt the weight on his heart, like his throat had temporarily closed. He turned to the recorder, realizing this could he be heard, seen.

And looked at Seifer, visibly struggling across from him, teeth clenched, fingers gripping the edge of the table. His eyes were wide, urgent. Short bursts of air escaping thinly parted lips. He was forcing down screams.

Squall reached forward and put his hand on Seifer's arm, to steady him. They looked at each other, Squall feeling a hundred screams boiling to a head within him, and slowly dissipating.

The pain passed. It couldn't have lasted more than thirty seconds.

Seifer let out a breath, sinking back into his chair. The bravado had all evaporated in an instant. They looked at each other, breathing raggedly. Seifer looked small, defeated.

"This interview is concluded," said Squall eventually, "It will be resumed at a later date."

He switched off the tape recorder, nodding at Seifer to stand. Seifer looked at him in disbelief, but did eventually comply.

Ratcliff confronted him the second he'd left interrogation, looking and sounding seconds short of a proverbial climax.

"What is the meaning of this, Detective?" he rasped, greasy locks waving about his face.

"You heard..." Squall began, but Ratcliff cut him off.

"I heard absolutely nothing! Nothing of any worth..."

"And I'm not going to _get_ anything of worth as it is. Maybe a night in lock-up will loosen him up."

"Or give him time to bolster his defenses."

"My defenses are plenty bolstered," said Seifer bitterly.

Ratcliff, in response, shook like a dog getting rid of water, "You've squirmed away from justice one time too many, you braggart urchin! Don't think your stalling buys you any time."

"That's what stalling's for, isn't it?"

"Take him away!" Ratcliff screamed at no one in particular. Two dispatchers crossed over to do the job, shepherding Seifer off between them. Squall made to follow, but Ratcliff put a staying hand on his shoulder.

"Detective Leonhart, you _do_ have grounds for bringing this one in, do you?"

"More than I thought, it turns out."

"Because the boy makes a good case for this being some personal vendetta."

Squall bit his lip, "I thought you put me on this case _because_ of my experience with these people."

"That's so. But I know as well as anyone how tempting it can be to have a score to settle..."

"I'm out of scores where Seifer's concerned. My vendettas can wait."

"I hope you're right, for all our sakes," he shook his head, mopping at his brow again, "Detective, I don't need to tell you what a _trying_ week this has been for me."

"For you, yes, of course, sir."

"Now with Kisigari and your protege out on their errand..."

"Have you heard anything from Yuffie?" asked Squall, "Or Saix?"

Ratcliff shook his head, muttered something about 'murder investigation', though whether he was talking about the case Squall had just come back from, or some other thing entirely, he didn't clarify, and Squall didn't consider wise to ask.

"In any case, it's you and I to hold this sorry house together," he sighed tremendously, "This was a quiet place, once. Do you remember that?"

"Not very well," Squall looked around the room, "No autopsy results from the Gainsborough girl?"

"Not yet. If anything, Detective that's the most worrisome thing of all."

"The autopsy?"

"The murder. All these disappearances, well, that's one thing. But this...it rings a bell. A sinister one."

Squall did a double take, "What kind of bell?"

But Ratcliff suddenly clammed up, "Work to be done, Detective. Work and work and no rest. God, what will become of us?"

He shuffled off dolefully, Squall watching after him, deciding not to be confused, for the sake of his own sanity.

Once he was certain no one was watching him, he changed course, making his way to the cell block, and its solitary inmate.

"Here to spit in my shithole?"

Squall grimaced, "Don't...don't say that again."

"Sorry."

"You should be." Squall parked himself in front of Seifer's cell, "What were you trying to do, _tell_ them everything?"

"You're the one that mentioned that night, not me."

"What was I supposed to do, say I arrested you for playing Hearts?"

"Well, that would've made me look a lot less shifty..."

"And it would've made _me_ look like an idiot."

"We all take our lumps, Leon."

"He wouldn't have bought it for a second."

"He _is_ an idiot!"

"You could've just made something up. You _knew_ I wasn't gonna tell them about Kairi, that I couldn't..."

"Yeah, well, you did say that, and then you dragged me right into the grizzly cave!"

"...the lion's den?"

"You dragged me here!"

"So I could use the DPD database, search the archives, see what I could dig up on our guys..."

"It's just my bad luck I'm in a cell, huh?"

Squall sighed, "You're not gonna be charged with anything.72 hours and you'll be free to go."

"We don't _have_ 72 hours, Leon. In case you forgot, we're on a time crunch, here!"

"Not a literal one," Squall sighed, "Though thanks to you, we've got less time than we did."

"First fuck up wasn't my fault," Seifer scowled, "And you don't wanna _know_ what it was like hiding the insta-seizure from your boys over here. Pretended I was gonna pee my pants."

Squall cocked an eyebrow, "You can't be surprised. You came five seconds from mentioning you work for the Styx and Stones."

"You brought that up first, going on about Ri like that..."

"But it didn't _happen_ until we got back to that night. I don't know, maybe the magic pacemaker isn't entirely perfect. Maybe we shouldn't talk about it ever again, play it safe."

"What a way to a run a business," muttered Seifer, "This rate, I might just punch myself in the chest eleven times and hope for the best."

"I'll keep that in mind," said Squall evenly, "I just had a thought."

"What? You wanna whack me again?"

"You told me Hades never got any girls from you. You're sticking with that?"

"Believe it or not, it's the truth."

"That doesn't change the fact that you _admitted_ to abducting Kairi."

"Abduct is a bit of a..."

"You followed her in the middle of the night and kidnapped her. That's abduction."

"Just say kidnapping, it doesn't sound as bad."

"What about sex trafficking? Can we have _that_ conversation again?"

"You called it human trafficking before."

"It's not much better. The night we ran into each other, in the Grotto, you were talking to the Madame, Ursula, about a girl. Of course, at the time I just thought you were paying for sex, which isn't that far out of the realm of reasoning..."

"Smooth, Leon, let's shit on the sex workers..."

"You weren't hiring a prostitute, you were _buying_ one. We met her the next day, right before our mutual friend carved a letter into her back."

Seifer sighed, "Ariel."

"You thought I forgot?"

"Well, I wouldn't blame ya, if you did..."

"I'm not asking as a cop, I just want to know. You said already, we're stuck with each other. I think I'm owed a couple of answers. Maybe it'll even clear up why you set off Luxord's ticker back there."

Seifer considered, "Well, you're not far off... But I didn't buy her."

"No?"

"Shit, Leon, like I have that kind of money," he was quiet for half a second before hastily adding, "And I'm not that fucked up!"

"No, but you were willing to be middleman for someone who _was_. Who? The same people you got Kairi for?"

Seifer sighed, "Where is this getting us, Leon?"

"You want me to trust you."

"You got me into this in the first place!" Seifer reached out to forcefully grab one of the bars of his cell, "And I'm not even talking about _now_. It was you, you came over to me, _used_ me for your little cop job, and then decided fuck it, you didn't need me any more!"

"I thought we weren't going over that again."

"You keep bringing it up. Like it's gonna make me feel bad. Like I don't hate it enough, like I _like_ any of this..."

"You think Rinoa would've appreciated all this? Selling girls to the highest bidder?"

"Don't even try it, man."

"She believed in you. I told her it was stupid, that it was pointless, it wasn't the job. But she _believed_ in you, and she went back for you..."

"You're gonna say she died for me," Seifer shook his head, "Don't. It ain't the truth."

And, to his credit, he didn't sound pleased about that. Squall sighed, "Enlighten me, then. Who are these people? If not the Styx and Stones, who are you selling the girls to?"

"Who _was_ I selling the girls to."

"Ariel died three days ago, are we gonna pretend if I we hadn't run into each other, you would've just stopped?"

Seifer didn't say anything, so Squall picked up, "Counting Kairi, there's been six girls gone missing since last year. Did you take them all?"

Finally, Seifer answered, "No."

"No?"

Seifer shook his head, "No. You're not gonna believe me, but it's true."

"Try me."

"The Arab chick..."

"Jasmine Ahmed."

"Middle-Eastern, whatever. The one our dead guy had his way with."

"Jafar," said Squall, "She was his paralegal. You didn't take her?"

Seifer shook his head, "Not the librarian chick from Twilight, neither. Don't ask me, I don't know who did either of them."

"But the others..."

"I know, four out of six, and it would've been five out of seven if one of 'em hadn't got killed first. Listen, when it started..." Seifer sighed, "Remember I told you, I've had to keep it on the level with Hades's guys, so they get off _my_ people's backs?"

"But you weren't taking girls for Hades."

"No, but his people set me up with these ones. There was a guy, like you called it, a middleman."

"This middleman got a name?"

"Not that he ever gave me," Seifer was even more reluctant than he'd been, "We'd meet one-on-one, in the dark, secret places. He'd give me a description."

"Like a name, address?"

"Man, you kidding? That's how I knew there was some fucked up shit going on. No names, no addresses. Just...like, hair and eyes. Skin. Like, the first two, they had to be blond and blue eyed."

" _Had_ to be?"

"I know, real Nazi shit. Only other thing was they had to be nobodies."

"Poor, alone, no close family..."

"I asked what this was for. Guy just said it was none of my business. But, yanno, I'm not stupid. I figured it was sex."

"So, you...what? Figured it out yourself?"

"Not hard. Not with the Earthshakers. Whisper something a coupla times, people start talking, eventually something comes back to you and nobody ever thinks you started it. Heard about a teacher in Traverse, waitress too."

"Just like that?"

"Don't think I liked it."

"Doesn't matter if you didn't like it, you still did it. So, what, you knock them out..."

"They gave me some stuff. Knockout juice, I figured. Hold it up to their face..."

"I get it. You brought them over to your middleman..."

"And I got the cash."

"How much?"

Seifer didn't answer immediately, "A lot."

"A number would be nice. Put a price on a human life, you get it."

"A _lot,_ " he sighed, "Anyway, coupla months pass, I hear nothing, then the librarian goes missing. Thought it was weird, didn't think it was part of the same scam."

"Wasn't it?"

"Well, she wasn't blond and blue eyed, was she?" Seifer sighed, "And then the lawyer girl. So, yeah, I started to think it was all the same thing. Maybe some racket going on, but they got someone else to do it."

"And then Bianca?"

"The college kid?"

"Fun fact," said Squall, "She and Aerith Gainsborough were in the same graduating class at Radiant Community."

At Seifer's blank stare, Squall added, "The girl who was killed tonight."

"What, you think it's connected?"

"Well, one of our birds is accused of killing Jasmine's old boss, it's not a stretch," he hesitated, "But you took Bianca."

Seifer nodded, "Guy showed up out of nowhere one day, scared the shit outta me."

"I bet."

"Said he had a couple more jobs. But I'd put two and two together by now, figured I didn't want anymore of it. But you can't just say 'thanks but no thanks' to these guys, Leon, you know that."

"You could've gone to the cops."

"You really gotta stop telling people that like it's some great advice," Seifer shrugged, "So he gives me the description. Different one, brunette, brown eyes. Did the same trick, found her, that was it."

"And Kairi?"

Seifer sighed, "She was different. He _asked_ for her, by name."

Squall frowned, "Why?"

Seifer shook his head, "Like he told me. Just that he needed her, same as all the others. And then, a coupla days later, I got a different message."

"Ariel?"

"Told me to find a red haired girl, blue eyes..."

"Same as Kairi."

"And I had to do it fast."

"So the Grotto. Put some of that money to good use."

"Well, like it or not, Ariel's one girl they're not gonna get, and it's on account of one of our birds, so that's so much for your little connection."

"It's a theory," said Squall, "So...you have no idea who these people are?"

"I know. I'm a shit criminal."

"But expert at self-preservation. God knows, it'll come in handy."

"Long as I watch my mouth, right?" Seifer sighed, taking a few steps back from the bars, "So what? We come back so you can do your cop stuff, figure out our next move, and now you're actually _doing_ cop stuff and we're stuck."

"Not necessarily."

"Why, because the psychopath we're chasing after killed Ariel and this girl?"

"That, and _this girl_ was Cloud's girlfriend."

Seifer blinked, "You're kidding?"

"Still think it's all a coincidence? The Captain implied there was some rivalry between Cloud and the Angel, maybe Aerith was a casualty of it."

Seifer let out a low whistle, "You said she was his girlfriend. So, what, did she know about..."

"I don't think so. Far as I can tell he left her behind when he went to the Underworld, same as everything else. Girl herself is clean. No record, no misdemeanors, not even a speeding ticket. Her local claim to fame is as a singing waitress."

"Must've made a cute couple," muttered Seifer.

"Far as I can tell, she had no contact with her ex for six years. Until last night."

"Last night?"

"Allegedly."

"So...he was there, at her place?"

"Wasn't her place. It was his. Or it used to be. His brother was there."

"He has a brother?"

"High school. There's a mother too, but she's out of town. We dropped her a line, let her know about the corpse in her apartment."

"So...what, Cloud was there?"

"Seems that way. His brother was keeping him there."

"Shit. Which of your detective tricks got you all this?"

Squall couldn't deny a tiny hint of reticence creeping into his tone as he answered, "He told me. The brother."

Seifer's face fell, "Kid _admitted_ it?"

"He was pretty torn up about it. He's as in the dark about what his brother's been up to as anybody, he just thought he was protecting him."

"So what did you do? Bring him in?"

"Is he sitting in a cell?"

Seifer shrugged, "Well, what _did_ you do?"

"Told him to keep it to himself. Him and his friends."

"His friends?"

"Two other kids from the crime scene. He didn't give them up, but they didn't exactly make it hard to find out they were covering something up."

"But they don't know anything about what he was doing or where he was?"

"No," Squall answered with certainty, "They wouldn't have hidden him if they had."

"How do you know?"

"They're kids."

"So's Riku, you didn't give _him_ no benefit of the doubt, did you?"

"Says the guy who let him take the fall for the girl you kidnapped and sold."

Seifer grimaced as Squall added, "That's not it. Those kids weren't the only ones who found the body. A woman, Sora's mother, and one of the teachers from Destiny High. I didn't learn very much from the mother, but the _teacher_..."

He reached into his pocket and retrieved Thatch's coded message, handing it to Seifer through the bars. He examined it for about half a second before asking, sounding tired, "What's this? Chinese?"

"It's an encrypted message," Squall clarified, "A code."

"Then just say it's a code. The teacher was working on it?"

"I didn't ask him. He dropped it, I picked it up."

"Stole it?"

"We've both done worse things for worse reasons," Squall crossed his arms, "You don't recognize it?"

"If it's _insipid_ , how am I supposed to recognize it?"

"Elysian Fields."

" _This_ again..."

"We played Hearts with those blowhards. The card girl's mask had this same lettering written on it."

"You were looking at her _mask_?"

"She gave me a secret message too. Remember the playing card? _They'll kill Celeste's boy_?"

Seifer sighed, "Should've asked you where you got that."

"There were a lot of balls rolling," he replied dryly, taking the letter back, "The teacher, Thatch, he never got to finish decoding it. I figure it's probably best that way."

"Why?"

Squall looked at him, flipping the page over to the other side, and Thatch's neat, minuscule handwriting. He began to read, ' _Milo, would that I could get this letter to yourself_..." he paused, explaining, "There's a couple of errors. I guess he was having trouble."

"Fascinating. Keep reading."

Squall obliged him, " _But I have only so many ways of finding you. It is too dangerous. So I have seen that it be delivered to a woman we can trust. Sora's mother has as much cost..._ I think that means stake... _in this as I. Maybe more. At least I chose to undertake this danger._ "

"She's taking her time, isn't she?"

Squall gave him a look, resuming, " _The day I met with you, I discovered the police believe Sora and Riku to have taken to the Underworld. Perhaps foolishly, I planned to go there myself, so that I may see this place and...and report on its cruelty. I look forward to the day that I might tell you all about my undertaking here, but I must be brief in this letter, for fear of it being captured_...she must have meant intercepted..."

"Keen."

"... _I would not want to endanger the few allies I have made here._ " he looked up at Seifer, "Then there's a few cross-outs. I think Thatch had some trouble with the next bit. But then, near the end... _'...may never leave._ '"

"Beautiful."

"' _But there is hope for the boys. I must believe they are free now. The world here is chaos. They are not all that have escaped. I believe that I will never leave..._ the translation gets rougher. Guess he didn't have enough time."

"Maybe if you let him _finish_ it..."

"He's the one that dropped it," Squall continued, "' _because of what I know. A man is dead. Rashid Jafar. You remember my story. I saw him dead, and I know his killer, so I cannot leave. His killer is loose now, and he will not stop. He cannot. I do not know if he works with these monsters or against them, but he is dangerous. He is the reason I am here. But Milo you must not tell the police. They cannot know. My life is not the only one they have. Just know his name. Cloud Strife._ "

He shrugged, "The rest is untranslated."

Seifer was quiet for a while, "So...this card girl chick..."

"I think I know who she is," Squall nodded, "Jane Porter."

Seifer looked at him blankly. Squall sighed, "DTV News? She's a reporter."

"How do you know it's her?"

"She mentions Rashid Jafar."

"Well, we know Cloud killed him..."

"Jane Porter did an interview with Jasmine Ahmed just before she went missing. She's the one that broke the story about the scandal, that's why she asks Milo to remember it. There's a connection."

"Luxord said Cloud killed Jafar to make Hades look bad, like a hit gone wrong."

"If Jane found the body, she's one witness too many. Maybe they had to get her out of the way, keep her from talking before the truth about Jafar's death gets out. God knows, I haven't heard anything about it up here."

"And now she's warning her buddies about it, because..."

"Maybe she knows why Cloud is killing. Anyway, we know she must've seen Sora down there at least once. She sent me a message, after all, for all the good it did."

It haunted him to think about it. That night, at Elysian Fields. If he hadn't been so consumed with anger about the thought of Seifer lying to him, if he hadn't been so determined to beat the truth out of him, he might've thought to follow Jane, speak to her face-to-face, prove himself worthy of her confidence.

They might've worked together, and perhaps the next day wouldn't have ended the way it had.

"Well, that's one mystery solved," sad Seifer.

"You're gonna have to break that down."

"You spoke to this guy right? And the lady who got the letter in the first place?"

"...yes."

"If they read that far, they'd know not to tell the cops. Why else would they keep it from you?"

"You've got a point."

"Gee, thanks, man."

Squall sighed, looking up and down the deserted cell block, listening to the muted susurrus of noise from the dispatch. Wouldn't be long before someone set out to look for him, given Ratcliff conveniently forgot about everyone else in the department as long as Squall was around.

"So that's where we stand. Three people dead, one because of one bird, two because of the other..."

"And that's just the ones we know about."

"I'm gonna see what I can learn about these two. Angel might be tricky, but Cloud's got a family, former residence..."

"Dead girlfriend."

"...there's got to be something in the public record. Or at least the department's records. Helps us narrow the search. Those kids, they're all convinced Cloud killed her. If Celeste and Thatch read this letter, they believe the same thing..."

"But we know this ain't how _that_ bird operates."

"It's the Angel. Not that we can _say_ that..."

"Maybe not," said Seifer, "But there's _something_ we can do."

Squall eyed him, "Yes?"

"The teacher and the mom, fine, we'll leave them out of it. They're probably too scared to piss straight. But these three kids..."

"I am not about to conscript three teenagers into our manhunt, Seifer."

"You said yourself they were hiding the guy! If he came back Sunday night, that's two whole days with him. They've gotta know _something_ , maybe they don't even think its important."

"They're _kids_ , and whatever they know can't be _that_ important or Zack would've told me."

"He didn't tell you he had help. You figured that out yourself."

"And I could've figured anything else out, then."

"You're good, Leon. Not that good. Come on, what've we got to lose?"

"You don't want me to answer that?"

Seifer sighed, "Listen, kids are stupid. You convince them you can help 'em, say there's something in it for them, they're all in."

"Do you _know_ how seedy you sound?"

"It's true!" said Seifer, but Squall was already walking off, doing all in his power to ignore him, "Leon! Hey, Leon...Leon!"

Squall let the door swing shut behind him, luxuriating in even this tiny little bit of agency. It appeared he'd have to take it where he could get it from now on.

* * *

"Subtle fella, isn't he?"

Bless Roxas, he was really learning to pick up cues. In response to Axel's comment, he made a tiny chuckling noise and said, "Probably has something to prove."

"I knew you were alright," Axel turned off the engine, pocketing the band van's keys (he'd considered dubbing it 'the Compass', but it came out sounding stupid as many times as it sounded badass, which he'd concluded deemed it not worth the trouble), "Let's move."

Roxas followed him out of the van and onto the rough ground where the cracked asphalt of this lonely side road met the dirt trail that wound off, up a hill, to the garish, three-story, wood and slate monstrosity that, according to the equally garish wooden signpost at the foot of the path, was ' _HUNTING HOUSE_ '.

"Got a real imagination too," remarked Axel, looking up the path, "Okay, so we're gonna need a plan. I mean, it's not like we don't _have_ one, I just haven't talked about it yet. But I've got a plan. Kind of a plan. I mean, it's an idea. I've done this kinda shit before. Yeah, I know this sounds bad, but they deserved it. Believe me. Roxas?"

He turned to address his silent comrade, worrying he might have careened off the deep end into precocious mute territory. Roxas was silent, sure, but not just standing rapt, like a zombie. No, instead he had turned away to look across the road at the treeline at the edge of the forest. His face was turned up into the soft breeze off the Rockies, his eyes open in wonderment.

"...Roxas?" Axel tried again.

"S-sorry," he cleared his throat, "Just...it's so beautiful."

"Yeah," agreed Axel, "It _is_ nice, isn't it?"

"I just...I never noticed."

"Nah..." Axel sighed, "Who does?"

Roxas looked at him, as if startled. Axel explained, "Well, you live around something long enough Roxas, you get used to it. Doesn't seem that special anymore."

"I...I get it," he said, "Doesn't stop it being sad."

"No. Guess it doesn't."

"But...um...the plan?" Roxas prompted. Axel nodded, "Right. So, the van's out of the way."

They both looked at the van, parked in the shoulder of the road, under a capacious overhang. Not exactly _invisible_ by any means, but hidden if you happened to be driving past. Well, mostly hidden. Ideally.

"I'd try and park us in the woods, but this thing isn't exactly trustworthy on pavement, and it's our only ride," he sighed, "So, that's the getaway. Shit gets too real, we make back for the van. _Capiche_?"

Roxas smiled helpfully, but Axel figured some edification was needed on this score, "Understand?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. I figured...I figured you meant that."

"Really? Good."

"What if we get...um...what if we get separated? Like, would it be too real then, or..." he trailed off, "I just...I just wanna know."

Axel considered, "Well...hopefully we don't _get_ separated. But, if we do, it might not be all bad. Hell, if Rene and I weren't forced to split up back in the Mad Lab, we never would've met."

Roxas didn't look entirely convinced, so Axel sighed and said, "Look, ideally, we stay together the whole way. But...even if we _do_ get split up. That's not the end. Not necessarily."

"But what if it is?"

Axel sighed, "Then you run like hell right back to this van."

"And what if you're not there?"

"I'll be there."

"Yeah, but...what if you're not?"

 _God, it's like having a puppy that talks back._

But Axel couldn't deny feeling a weird sort of discomfort, a _nice_ one. The kid was relying on him. Poor sucker.

"I'll be back. But, if by some wild, crazy, one in a catillion chance I'm _not_...you go off on your own."

"My own?" he said in a ghost of a voice, "I...I can't..."

"Kid, I thawed you out of the ice two nights ago, and you're already trudging around in the muck and speaking in full sentences. Bet there's nothing you can't do if things get too hot."

"Hot?"

"Dangerous. Risky. Wild. Crazy. Take your pick."

Roxas nodded, giving a tiny smile, "Sure. Yeah, you're...you're right. Let's go."

And off they went, trudging up the trail, the late morning sun at their backs. Birds called from the trees, singing to each other. It would've been a real pretty scene if Axel wasn't thinking what a giant dumbass he was to even be attempting this in the first place. Far all he knew, Olette didn't know what she was talking about.

Actually, that didn't even seem like that big of a leap in logic. He had absolutely no reason to believe this _wasn't_ all just a wild goose chase. At this rate, he might as well have just dragged himself to the TPD, confessed his sins, and gotten a nice comfy cell next to Larxene so they could blame each other for this mess of theirs, like old times.

But, in the end, Larxene _was_ locked up. And so was Dem, so was Riku. Hell, so was Sora. And here was Axel, the sole, sorry link between them all.

Lucky them.

But the point still stood. He had to help them, follow every lead he had, no matter how shaky. He was their only hope.

Poor them.

"Wait."

"Rock in your shoe, Rox?" Axel prompted.

"No..." he said, voice low, "Listen."

Axel followed his gaze back down the path from where they'd come. At first it was just the birdsong, the wind in the trees. Same sounds as ever. But there was another layer. A soft rumble, a roar. Axel realized the ground was beginning to shake.

"Aw no," Axel breathed, "Hide."

"What?"

" _Hide_!" not waiting for Roxas to respond, Axel grabbed him by the arm and, taking him in tow, ducked off the path and into the undergrowth, getting a mouthful of dirt, grass and other woodsy junk for his trouble.

They'd acted not a moment too soon, it turned out. The very next second, the chorus of roars became deafening, the fresh woodland air drenched with the stench of exhaust. Axel and Roxas watched from the cover of the trees as a great, dark mass swept down the path, kicking up mud still loose from last night's rain.

It was a silent procession, if you ignored the mighty, monstrous bellowing of their machines. The riders sat still as if they were built into their bikes, gloved hands gripping handlebars, visors brought down and scarfs brought up to hide their faces.

Next to Axel, Roxas was squinting, the better to keep dirt from being kicked up into his face. Probably a good idea, but Axel found he was slow to copy it. He couldn't take his eyes from the mob as it passed and, when it did, the stitching on the back of all those leather jackets.

Silver thread, worked over the black in a twisty vertical cone, spiraling inward, like a funnel cloud. Letters worked in above and below: _W_ and _M_ , made to look identical, but for the way they were facing, as if one had only been tossed upside down by the force of the tornado that separated them.

"Shit," Axel said again as the roars faded to rumbles, and the herd vanished from sight. At Roxas's questioning glance he explained, "Biker gang. The Wind Makers. They're sort of my kind's natural born enemies, after the cops."

"The Wind Makers." it wasn't a question.

"What, you know 'em?"

Roxas didn't answer at once, "I don't know _what_ I know."

"Me neither, most of the time," Axel got to his feet, offering Roxas a hand to help him up as well, "But if they're here..." he sighed, "I don't get it, but it stinks. Sure, up north here, it's their territory, but I'm pretty sure this is private property."

Roxas made a tiny noise. Axel sighed, "Yeah, I know we've got no room to talk, but what I mean is..."

He trailed off, following Roxas's gaze over his shoulder, to the canopy above them, "Whoa."

Strung up above the forest floor, from trunk to trunk, branch to branch, was a little kid's dream. A rustic obstacle course, wood planks and sturdy ropes coming together to make narrow bridges, connecting tiny square platforms. Rope ladders spanning from a foot or two above the ground up into the trees, nearly out of sight.

"Guess he works out," muttered Axel.

"What's it for?"

"Well, if the name of his house isn't lying to us, he's a hunter. Guess this is where he hunts."

"All the way up there?"

"Why not? He's a dude, dudes love sniping deer where nobody can see them."

"Aren't you a dude?"

"Sure, but I get my kicks out of bikes and cars. I'm not _that_ desperate yet," he brushed his jeans down, as if that was going to help anything, "Okay, Rox, let's get go... _argh_!"

In what Axel was sure made a fantastical visual spectacle, his very next step lifted him clear from the ground, thick rope walls coming up around him as the air was snatched from his lungs, bits of bark and dirt raining down into his gaping eyes and mouth as, before he knew what the hell was happening, he began to swing back and forth with a steadily decreasing cadence, like an ungainly pendulum, albeit one with a killer smile and dazzling green eyes.

Through the gaps in the netting, Axel could make out Roxas, standing about twenty feet below on the forest floor, gawping at him, "What did you _do_?"

"I don't know, Rox, it seemed like a good idea at the time," replied Axel dryly, "Guess we tripped the security system."

" _You_ tripped it."

"Oh, lookie there, you can shift blame too,"

"But you did."

"Yeah, I know I did, don't rub it in," Axel sighed, "Okay, so this can't be as bad as it looks."

"No?"

"It's probably a hunting snare. Like, to catch deer and...other big, skinny things."

"And that isn't so bad?"

"Well, no. I mean, it can't be that hard to cut down if he wanted to _get_ the deer after he caught it, right?"

"Right?" Roxas looked confused, "But, um...he wouldn't care if the deer _lived_ after he cut it down, right? Like, wouldn't it be dead?"

"Well, yeah, he's a hunter, of course he wants it..." he paused, realizing what Roxas meant, looking down at the forest floor below him, the even smaller than usual figure of Roxas staring up, "Oh. Right."

"I mean, it's a long way down...isn't it?"

"Um...yeah," he said, feeling his lips dry up, "Yeah. It is. Okay, so let me think.."

"What about your knife?"

"Huh?"

Roxas explained, very patiently, "You know, the knife? When you grabbed me, and you put it up on my neck..."

"We talked about that, it was just an act..."

"Yeah, but it's a _knife_. Right?"

Axel got the idea, "Yeah. Yeah, it is. Good one, Roxas. Quick thinking. Okay, so it's in my pocket..." he reached for the aforementioned pocket, finding it harder than expected, due to the fact that his right leg was beneath and behind him, his combat boot all but making sweet love to his ear, and his pocket a few inches from where his fingertips could well reach.

"Because that would be too easy," he sighed, "Give me a sec, I'll figure it out."

Figuring it out, in this case, was a series of increasingly strained sit-ups which, due to the confinement of his surroundings, ended up cutting short just before the sit could turn to up. After several iterations of this routine, Roxas seemed to find it suitable to provide commentary.

"Um...Axel?"

"I've almost got it! Any second..."

"No, Axel..."

"Might just dislocate my arm first..."

"Axel!" and before he knew what was happening, a tiny pointy object went flying dangerously close to his nose, narrowly missing his ear, and then sailing sadly through a gap in the net to come back down to the forest floor.

"What the fuck was that?" he demanded of the sheepish figure looking up at him.

"It...um...it was on the ground. I guess it fell out of your pocket."

Axel sighed, "I guess. Good effort, Rox. Just, give me a head's up next time you try to stab me."

"Well, I wasn't _trying_..."

"It's cool. Just...um...can you find it now?"

Roxas got to work, looking around through heaps of dried leaves, twigs and sticks and so on. After either a minute or ten, it was hard to tell, he'd returned to a spot just below the net, "Found it!"

"Okay, so...let's try _not_ to throw it, this time."

"Oh. But I can't reach from here..."

"Maybe not. But..." he took a quick look at his surroundings, following the rope suspending his net up into the treetop to the thick branch it was knotted around. He proceeded to follow the length of the branch to the tree it began at, and then down the length of the tree a little way...

"There! Okay, so see that little platform up in the tree, there?"

"Yes."

"And...um...yeah! See over there, the ladder on that tree?"

"Yes."

"And then there's that bridge, from that tree to this one."

"Yes."

"Okay, so if you just climbed up to the bridge, I could swing the net over there and you could..."

"No."

"What, what do you mean 'no'?"

"I mean..." Roxas shifted nervously from foot to foot, "I can't do that."

"Roxas, didn't we _just_ have this conversation?"

"Well...what if it doesn't work?"

"Then it doesn't work, we'll figure something else..."

"But what if I cut you loose and then you fall and..."

Well, shit.

"Well, then that's on me for coming up with the stupid idea in the first place."

There was a silence. Eventually, Roxas said, "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"It was worth a shot."

Roxas sighed, nodding, "You're right. It is."

"Oh," he watched, not even bothering to hide his surprise as Roxas pocketed the knife and started toward the rope ladder, "Guess it is."

To Roxas's credit, he didn't put on any degree of bravado as he started up the ladder, gripping both sides in a vice grip as he started scaling his way upward, face determinedly pointed heavenward, as if to even acknowledge the ground beneath was to make sure he met it rather unpleasantly.

"Good going, kid," Axel felt it important to give the guy some much needed emotional boosters, for both their sakes, "Alright, just keep it up...almost there. Lest we forget, you made me jump off a roof, this is nothing."

He wasn't sure if Roxas was listening to any of this, or was determinedly trying to tune him out. In any case, before long he had reached the landing at the top of the ladder, frozen in a kind of disbelief at having done so at all.

"Great, Roxas! Good, that's...that's really good. So..."

"Yeah," he said faintly, looking down the length of the bridge, "Yeah, I know."

He made his way along the rope bridge, one hand on either side, taking each step about a minute at a time, acutely aware of the bridge swaying back and forth beneath his feet.

"You're doing good, kid!" Axel prompted, "You can probably...yeah, just stop right there."

And he did, right in the middle of the bridge, facing Axel directly.

"So...I'm gonna just try and swing this..." Axel found that this was easier in theory than it was in practice. One or two pelvic thrusts really only succeeded in budging him a few inches to either side.

"Just...gotta build momentum. Or, um, centrifugal force... One of those things, I get 'em confused."

"And I'm supposed to..."

"When I'm close enough..." pelvic thrust, extended gasp, "Take the knife..." another thrust, "...and cut the rope..."

"That doesn't sound..."

"We'll try it!" he gave it another go, getting a bit more give this time, "Okay, so...maybe one more..."

"Axel, I'm not sure about..."

"Now!"

And the net swung forward forcefully, bearing down toward the rope bridge, "Come on, Roxas, now!"

With a little, strangulated yelp, Roxas lunged forward, grabbing for the rope with one hand,the knife held out in the other...

Momentum, it turned out, was a dangerous son of a bitch. Axel wasn't entirely sure what happened, but the next thing he knew he was swinging back the _other_ way, practically nose to nose with Roxas through gaps in the net.

"Oh, Jesus..." he began, breathlessly, as Roxas let out a cry of, "Sorry! Sorry, I'm..."

"Well don't start cutting it now!"

"I'm not!"

"Then what's that noise..." but he only needed to look up to realize the rope suspending them in the air was rapidly coming undone, "Aw, shit."

Thinking quickly, he turned to Roxas, "Okay. Other way."

" _What_?"

"Swing back!"

"How?"

"You just...you..." Couldn't blame the kid there, this wasn't the kind of thing you could just put into words, "Fuck, we're coming back."

And they were, swinging back toward the bridge, literally hanging from a couple of threads...

They hit the bridge with blunt force, shaking it on its moorings. There was a crash, a sound of splintering wood, a whoosh of air as the rope snapped clear of the tree branch, the net coming unfurled around them.

Axel felt himself falling, let out a scream, heard Roxas cry out somewhere above him, "Watch it!"

And then he stopped, feeling a hand on his. Breathing heavily, he looked up, saw the bridge had snapped, dangling from the platform above like a crude ladder. Roxas was grabbing on to one of the planks with one hand, holding him up with the other.

"Sorry," he said, looking mortified.

Axel shook his head, struggling to catch his breath, "You kidding? Thanks, man. Really."

"But...it's my fault."

"Eh," he shrugged, "It's my fault too, and if we're talking rap sheets, mine's bigger," he nodded at the broken bridge from which they were now dangling, "Anyway, it all works out. We've got a way up in case we fall."

Roxas looked at him, bewildered. Axel shrugged, "Come on, on and up."

"Up?"

"Yeah, I've got an idea."

Roxas looked no less confused, but he obliged anyway, climbing up the bridge to the landing, Axel close behind him.

"Alright..." Axel began, climbing up as well, "So, it's like a rope course, right?"

"Sure."

"A bit high off the ground, as we know."

"As we know."

"And the ground is...not safe."

"As we also know."

"Might as well continue this way."

Roxas cocked an eyebrow. Axel shrugged, "The house is on top of the hill. Not a long way. Less chance being seen too."

Roxas nodded a couple of times, still not looking sold, though he said, "Yeah. Yeah, sure. Why not?"

"Why not," Axel agreed, "Okay, let's go."

And on they went, crossing more narrow bridges, climbing up and then down thin wooden ramps. The mountain air was cool and thin at this level. Axel could feel his ears pop at one point, which didn't do much to make him feel any better.

"The hell is this thing?" Axel asked at one point, near the hilltop.

Roxas looked the big wooden box up and down, giving the tiny black wheels a little nudge with the toe of his shoe, "Cart?"

"On a pulley," added Axel, "Probably to bring stuff up and down. We must be..."

And they were. The hunting lodge was directly ahead of them. Looking somehow bigger and smaller than it had from the foot the path, maybe because they were standing almost even with its topmost level.

"What do you think's going on?" asked Roxas.

Axel followed his gaze to the dozen or so bikes parked in perfect formation in front of the lodge.

"Rox, I wish I knew," Axel sighed, "Place like this doesn't seem like Wind Maker speed. Or Earthshaker speed. But what the hell do I know, right?"

Roxas shrugged. Axel looked at him, "You weren't supposed to agree."

"Sorry."

"Forget it, Rox," Axel sighed, "Okay. So, we're _here_. Now to get inside..."

"I've got an idea."

"Please."

"This," Roxas gave the cart a little shake, "We can take it."

"What, down to the ground and knock on the door?"

Roxas shook his head, "See the balcony?"

Axel looked across to the balcony that made up the southwest corner of the lodge. There was a pair of glass doors off it, leading into the second story.

"I see it. But, Rox, the car only goes up and down..."

"Not if we cut the cord," he reached into his pocket and tossed Axel's knife back to him, "I held onto it."

"Good on you," he turned the knife over ion his hand, "But, Roxas..."

"If it worked with the net, it'll work with this."

"The net was a _net_ Roxas, this is a box on wheels."

"We can still try! Come on, Axel, I've got a good feeling about this."

"Roxas, I'm really glad you've got feelings, really, but..." but he couldn't just say no to him. It was weird but that's how it was.

"Alright. But we've got one shot at this, Roxas, and if it doesn't work..."

"Then we try something else. Right?"

"Or we fall far and hard enough to not be able to try anything ever again. Could go both ways."

But he joined Roxas in the rickety little cart all the same. Sizing up the thinner ropes holding the cart up in the pulley, Axel mused "Okay, so if we cut _one_ that'll probably make the pulley thing go crazy...don't look at me like that, high school was hard..."

"I wasn't look..."

"So, we'll have to move really fast to swing the thing before we hit the ground and _maybe_ then we can grab the balcony," he shrugged, "Why not? Crazier shit's happened."

"What about when we're inside?" asked Roxas.

Axel gritted his teeth, "We'll figure it out."

Roxas looked skeptical (Axel was beginning to miss his absent reasoning powers), but he did eventually nod, "Okay. Let's try it."

"Say a prayer," Axel muttered.

"How?"

 _Jesus._

Figuring that wouldn't be a sufficient answer, Axel added, "Just beg inside your head for this to work. It's supposed to help."

"How..."

"Hold on!" Axel sliced through one rope. At once, the cart began to drop, to pitch forward. Axel indicated to Roxas to lean forward with him, so as to swing them forward, toward the lounge.

Turned out Roxas was better equipped for _that_ particular activity than Axel was giving him credit for. He threw himself into the front side of the cart. The one remaining cord groaned with effort, a harsh wind beating Axel in the face. They were swinging forward and swinging fast.

He scrambled to grab for purchase, let out a perhaps undignified smush up of various swears, and soon found that there was no floor beneath his feet. There was, in fact, nothing beneath him at all, except presumably the earth considerably below him.

He heard Roxas call something out, probably his name, as he sailed above and beyond him. Then, fainter, a noise of broken wood, a cry, a crash.

Axel felt the blood drain for his face, but he only had a split second to let the petrifying fear wash over him before he crashed into the side of the house.

Well, it wasn't so much _crashing_ as sliding painfully against aggressively weathered wood. The wind was knocked out of him at once, but Axel at least maintained enough of his senses to brace himself, grasping out for any handhold he could find.

Good thing about a house made out of rustic lumber scrap, there was no shortage of knots and chips in the wood for him to hold onto. He caught himself just short of sliding past the second floor and a no doubt unpleasant spat somewhere below.

"Oh God," he panted rapidly, struggling to regain his composure, "Aw God this is...not good."

He considered calling for Roxas, making sure he was okay. After all, the kid was resilient, but there had to be a limit at some point, right?

But of course calling _anything_ would just put the both of them in more...

"What was that noise?"

 _Fricking frack._

A woman's voice from somewhere below and within. A window must be open on the first floor, maybe the second, he could hear her pretty distinctly. Worse, he _recognized_ the voice.

 _No surprise. It couldn't just be_ any _random motor mob beating you to this joint_.

"Noise?" a stuffy accented voice, rich and plummy, the kind some stuffy aristocrat would probably use were it not for all the prevalent stereotypes, "My dear lady, calm yourself. I hear nothing. You don't hear anything, do you, Gaston?"

The voice that replied was a lazy, confident one. Axel could imagine the smug, douchey face behind it at once.

"Nothing at all. You're just not used to the Great Outdoors, sweetie. You live here long enough, you learn when to get your hackles up."

She sounded less than impressed, "My hackles are _very_ well trained. It sounded like something..."

"Fine, fine," Gaston sounded bored already, "I see there'll be no smoothing you over. Girl like yourself in a job like this...I'd have expected a little more chutzpah."

"Chutzpah can get a _woman_ like me killed. I know how to take care of myself."

"LeFou," Gaston called as if to drown her out, "Have a look upstairs, see what all that fuss is."

A tiny, squirrelly voice chirped in, "Y-yes, yes, of course, sir!"

Axel tensed at once. Not much use hanging around here anymore. There was a window a little way above him. Steeling himself, he scrambled hand over hand to reach the ledge. Beyond, he could glimpse a tiny, cozy looking room, lined with bookcases, some big couches in earthy colors, one of those chandeliers made out of deer antlers.  
Not much use _seeing_ any of that, though. There was no opening the window from...

A shadow fell across the doorway of the room within. Axel caught his breath, lowering his hand at once as he ducked as much as he could beneath the window ledge.

Downstairs, the meeting had commenced.

"Now," the stuffy aristocrat voice, "We were talking terms, I seem to recall."

"We were indeed," said Gaston with a renewed energy, "Your people come to me highly recommended."

"We've earned our laurels and we don't rest on them."

"I hope so. This is no rinky dink robbery I'm asking for..."

"Good, because if it was, I'd have to ask you to find someone else to take care of it for you."

The window opened, just above Axel. He sucked in his breath as much as he could, hoping this was enough to neatly hide him from sight.

The face that peered out the window was exactly what Axel expected from someone called 'LeFou'. Tiny, paunchy face, nose about two times two big, and a practically invisible mouth worked into a permanent expression of nervous cramps.

He looked one way, then another before sighing, shaking his head. He reached for the window, beginning to pull it shut...

Axel made up his mind.

In the split second before the window was brought down fully, he heaved himself up onto and over the ledge, forcing himself through and into the lodge head first, right into LeFou who, predictably, opened his mouth to scream.

"Really bad idea, man," Axel warned, grabbing him and pressing one hand over his mouth, "I come in peace. Mostly."

LeFou made some distorted shrieking noise from behind Axel's hand. Ten to one, he was pretty close to pissing himself.

"Could you _stop_ that? It's embarrassing."

He persisted. Axel sighed, rolling his eyes as he reaches with his free hand into his pocket, only to find it empty.

His knife had been in his hand when the cart went flying. Shit.

But he was gonna bet he didn't exactly need a weapon to quail this guy into compliance.

"Listen, I'm not gonna hurt you," he said in a dangerous whisper, "But if you start singing any louder, I'm gonna have to."

 _With what? Your dazzling smile?_

But LeFou clearly didn't need to see a weapon to be convinced of Axel's lethal prowess. He quieted down.

"Now," Axel continued, "Can I let go of you?"

LeFou nodded rapidly, so Axel obliged him. Immediately, LeFou collapsed against the nearest sofa, hand draped over his forehead, like some fainting debutante in a glossy period film.

"Oh God, oh mercy me..."

"Mercy you," said Axel dryly, opening his mouth to ask his first question, but LeFou beat him to it.

"You were sent by _him_ , weren't you?" he asked in trembling syllables, "The Lord of the Dead!"

"Man, _what_?" Axel asked flatly.

"You're one of his hired killers! Oh, I warned him, I _warned_ him not to start any trouble! He knows everything, that's what they say, _everything_..."

Axel found himself confronted with a choice. He could play along, claim to actually be working with the Lord of the Dead. If LeFou was referring to their local visibly invisible crime syndicate, it shouldn't be that hard to play along.

Then again, he could seen _way_ more places where playing along got him in a spot worse up than where he'd started, in the moment _and_ in the long run.

"Look, man, believe it or not, I don't work for the Styx and Stones. As far as crime goes, I prefer the _dis_ organized kind."

"Then...then what do you want?" LeFou regained some composure. Maybe he thought he could handle Axel now that he wasn't a mobster, "Because if this is a burglary..."

"I've got some questions for your boss," Axel said coolly, "That's all."

"A-and what makes you think you've any right to answers?" LeFou asked with a hint of impudence.

"You wanna get sassy now?"

"Just...just climbing into the Hunting House..."

"Real stellar name by the way, did Gaston come up with it himself?"

"My employer is a good man! Honest and hardworking. Gaston comes from nothing! Nobody, nowhere, can claim to have helped this community's economy as he has! Nobody invests like Gaston, _gives_ like Gaston..."

"Nobody stuffs roadkill like Gaston," Axel finished, indicated the grotesquely posed taxidermy raccoon on the side table, arranged to lean sassily against a clock.

"The land around this lodge is all private property! Gaston may hunt as he pleases on it."

"Yeah, that's great, good for him. Listen, I'm no expert, but I've got a hard time believing this guy's as great as you say he is when you _just_ admitted he's got beef with a mob boss."

LeFou turned a charming shade of spoiled milk, entering into some kind of verbal sepsis, words trampled and throttling each other with abandon.

"Never mind he's meeting with some of those bikers you respectable types are always claiming kill tourism and sully the quality of life around this place, so..."

"Gaston is a businessman! Nobody..."

"Does business like Gaston, I get it."

"And if certain...underworld elements have it out for him, it's only because he's trying to bring down their enterprise!"

"So he's looking for help from bikers," guessed Axel, "Like any legit, honest dude only looking out for the public good."

LeFou grimaced, "You are entirely..."

"Listen, man, I don't really give a shit. I already told you, I'm not here about that."

LeFou hesitated, "...no?"

"Nope. I'm looking for a name. You help me with that, I'm out of you _and_ your boss's hair for good. Get it?"

LeFou got all shifty eyes, "What's the name?"

Axel leaned in, "Isabelle Rousseau."

LeFou bristled, "That's it, then! You're one of those reporters! I already told you, all of you, we know nothing, there's nothing more to be found..."

"Jesus Christ..."

"Gaston was _shattered_! Heartbroken..."

"How far up this guy's ass are you?"

"The police investigated and _no_ evidence was found! None! We know nothing, nothing..."

"Fine. Nothing. What about another name, not a person this time. A place," he whispered into LeFou's curdled pudding of a face, " _X-Corp_."

If LeFou hadn't wet his pants yet, he must have now. He dropped to his knees, lips trembling, "Y-you know about..."

"You must be a hit at poker parties."

"You...you must understand," he said softly, desperately, "I told him it was a bad idea, horrible, immoral..."

"Immoral? Like, more immoral than the whole mobster thing?"

"Not natural! That's what it was, unnatural! But he was so in _love_ with her, you see. And...and he had to have her..."

"What did he do to her?" asked Axel, "What do they _do_ at that place?"

It was some time before LeFou answered, "There's...there's documentation. Paperwork. Gaston always keeps copies...on my advice."

"I'm gonna want to see those papers."

"They'll ruin him," said LeFou, "You must understand. He'll be ruined."

"I don't care about ruining him."

Though he wouldn't do anything to _stop_ him being ruined if it came to that. LeFou didn't need to hear that though, and probably he already suspected that was the case. He wasn't entirely stupid, not if he insisted on keeping records.

"Follow me," he said at last, starting out of the room, "Quickly!"

So Axel followed out of the room and into the hallway. Everything was wood panels in here too, polished wood floor, cozy glass wall sconces, all turned off so that there was a disused, shadowy complexion to the whole place.

The balcony had been on the second floor, Axel remembered. In any case, there was no sign of Roxas here.

 _If something happened to him, if he went flying or...or worse..._

He had refused to let Hayner go with them. Maybe he should've put his foot down for Roxas as well. This wasn't even his fight, his problem.

If anything, he was a victim of _X_ -Corp just as much as Demyx, Riku, Sora...and this Isabelle Rousseau, whoever she was.

LeFou started down the stairs to the second floor. The meeting must've been going on on the first. Axel could hear them talking.

"What kind of damage are we talking about here?" her voice, cool, vaguely amused by all this.

"The sort that sends a message," Gaston said pointedly, "That silky devil thinks he's untouchable, he's forgotten who _made_ him rich in the first place. My associate and I nearly died in his death pit..."

"The name should've warned you off," she commented dryly.

"We simply need Hades to remember we work _with_ him," the accented voice, "Not _for_ him."

"This isn't the first time we've hit Hades," she pointed out, "He doesn't react to much."

"He will this time. The incident at the Coliseum's weakened him. He must protect his position now, at any cost. The slightest push..."

"Here we are," LeFou led Axel into a tiny room off the second floor landing, "The study."

"What's he study?" asked Axel, noting an enormous stuffed _thing_ in the corner, "Crimes against nature?"

LeFou followed Axel's gaze, "Gaston enjoys curiosities."

"That's one word for it," Axel looked up and down the trophy. It could be a bear, he supposed. It was big, burly, brown fur. But it was shaggier, like a buffalo, with a flatter snout, like a mountain lion or some other big cat.

Gave Axel a sickly feeling to look at it, so he turned his attention back to LeFou, who was bent over a safe that, apparently had been neatly concealed behind a mounted moose head on the wall.

"It's a tricky combination..." LeFou muttered, "numbers matched to letters..."

"The numbers spell out 'Gaston'?" Axel guessed.

LeFou sighed, "I tried to take some sense into him. He never listens."

"Most people don't," said Axel, finding himself thinking of Riku and of Saix, and realizing that that made him Gaston in this comparison. He wasn't sure which of the three of them came out of that worse off.

"Here we are," said LeFou, opening the safe, "Now, you must understand, these documents pertain to a...a sensitive business transaction. Part of a much larger web than you will find here. We are by no means the initiators of..."

"Nah, I already figured you weren't."

LeFou made as if to hand the papers over, pausing, "You must have some stake in this. Nobody would go through all this trouble without some personal benefit."

"Fun as it might be to pretend, I'm no saint," Axel agreed.

"It's the boy, isn't it?" LeFou asked suddenly, "Belle's boy?"

Axel did a double take, "Her boy?"

"He always used to follow her around. Hang around the library, him and his friends. He played this...er...well, it looked like a guitar."

Axel froze, "He liked her. Didn't she?"

"A teenage boy with a teenage crush. But Belle took pity on him. She took pity on most everything. Not Gaston, of course. And Gaston hates pity anyway..."

"Did Gaston know?" Axel asked, "About him?"

"The kid? Of course. Annoyed him to no end. But...but that was it, you must understand. He had no reason to bother himself with..."

"Just give me the papers."

LeFou suddenly seemed possessed by second thoughts, "I...I'm not..."

"You're not backing out now," Axel reached over, "The papers, or I'll take them from you."

LeFou watched him, trembling like unset gelatin. At last, he handed a manila envelope to Axel, who accepted it.

Axel nodded approvingly, looking over the envelope, the nondescript ' _CONFIDENTIAL'_ stamped over it in black ink, "That wasn't bad, now, was..."

"Help!" LeFou shrieked, "Help, help, please! There's an intruder! Help!"

"Oh, you son of a..." Axel trailed off, realizing words were of little consequence at this point.

So he settled for socking LeFou in his big stupid nose before turning on his heel and tearing out of the room, the envelope still in his hand.

The balcony should be on this floor, right? The landing went off in two ways outside the study, no clear sign of the big glass doors he'd glimpsed from outside anywhere in sight.

There was, however, the staircase down to the first floor. Not that that was a reliable means of egress, entirely due to the fact it was already occupied.

"Who the hell are you?" Gaston looked exactly as everything Axel had heard about him suggested, right down to the fou-fou ponytail and the excessive aftershave, "And what are you doing on my property?"

Axel opened his mouth to answer, finding he was inconveniently rooted to the floor. It was all he could do to manage, "...actually, the Indians were here first."

Gaston scowled, "You're not one of those tree hugging sissies, are you?"

"Now, what in the devil is the meaning of all this?" the stuffy aristocrat scaled the steps behind Gaston, proving to look next to nothing like how Axel had imagined him. Big, burly, with a lantern jaw and a nose that could could slice sandwich bread, "Gaston, the woman's near ready to walk out on us..."

"Yeah about her," said Axel, "You're probably better off finding someone else to do your dirty work. She likes her contracts the less clowns, the better."

"We've got a trespasser, Clayton," Gaston pointed out.

Clayton cocked an eyebrow, "One of Hades's?"

"Sorry to disappoint, but no," Axel shrugged, "And, hey, you want me gone, I'll..."

But it was too late.

"Shit," Gaston had noticed the envelope in Axel's hand, "You give that over."

"Ooh, big tough guy," said Axel, "I'm scared sheetless," he waved the envelope around as if to prove the point, "Jeez, that's the best you can do? No wonder you take it all out on ani..."

Gaston swung at him, his fist connecting in Axel's gut, doubling him over at once. Before Axel had time to react, he'd brought another fist down into the small of his back. Axel fell forward, head over knees, onto the steps, reaching out to catch himself on the the stair railing.

The envelope went skittering ahead of him down the steps. Axel reached out for it, fingers brushing the paper. He grasped wildly, caught it between two fingers.

"That's quite enough of that!" announced Clayton curtly as a big, hairy hand caught Axel by the back of his jacket, "I don't know who you are boy, or what you're after, but..."

Axel jabbed an elbow into Clayton's thigh, "Could you just _shut up_?"

"A bad mistake, boy," Clayton snarled, swinging again. Axel had had enough experience in a fight to know his strengths: running and hiding.

Against a guy this size, that wasn't just strategy, it was also necessary.

"A bad mistake," quipped Axel, ducking and sidestepping Clayton's punches, darting first up and then down the steps, attempting to outpace him, "is using..." one step, "your name," duck, "as your safe password!"

He was able to land one punch to what he supposed was the general location of Clayton's solar plexus. Teeth gritted in pain, he turned to look at Gaston, "You _idiot_!"

Gaston replied with an incoherent roar, thundering down the steps, eyes blazing. Axel figured he had about two seconds to get out of the way before he became a tacky taxidermy himself...

Something ran into Gaston from behind. He pitched forward, tripping over his feet, tumbling down the stairs, his roar turning into a startled, indigent cry.

Clayton barely had time to react, even Axel felt a little breathless, but had the presence of mind to duck out of the way, toward the railing, as Gaston fell into Clayton, making a two-man snowball.

He became aware of the steady rumbling of wheels on wood, a scrap, a clatter, an impossibly jubilant voice crying out, "Meet me at the bottom!"

"Holy..." Axel began, trying to process what had just zipped past him.

A wooden square, cracked and splintered, balanced on four worn wheels. He didn't have to wonder what had happened to the four sides that had once made it a cart. Anyway, such questions seemed pointless in the face of the kid balanced on top of the makeshift skateboard, riding the railing like a tailpipe, arms out to either side, face turned triumphantly ahead of him.

"Roxas, you crazy son of a bitch," he grinned, vaulting over the railing, landing on the first floor just in time for Roxas to careen off the railing, landing perfectly on four wheels on the polished wood floor.

"Climb on!" he told him.

"Will it hold?"

"Course it will," he held out his hand, "Trust me!"

Axel eyed the hand, becoming increasingly aware of footsteps from nearby, angry voices.

He took Roxas's hand, stepping up onto the board behind him. Without another word, Roxas kicked them forward, and they rocketed over the floor, through the house, toward the big front doors.

"Um...Rox?"

"It's okay!"

"But, the..."

"It's alright!"

They approached the doors and, one second before they crashed into them, Roxas reached out and threw them open. In another second, Roxas had taken them down the patio steps, skidding down the railing easy as anything.

Axel swayed for balance, holding the envelope close at his side.

"Holy shit," he panted, turning back to Roxas, "Holy shit."

They were going down the path now, away from the lodge, toward the road.

"Guess my plan worked out, huh?" Roxas asked.

"Damn right, it did! Jesus, Rox...where did you learn to do all that?"

Roxas only shrugged in reply, "I don't know!" laughing into the wind, "I just do."

Only later did Axel realize this was the first time he'd heard him laugh.

* * *

 **A/N:** I guess I owe you guys some apologies for the draught of Sora and Riku the last couple of chapters. This story is _still_ about them, of course, but I try to balance out each character's story. Just like Squall was gone for a while before recurring in several chapters lately, so the same is happening to our boys. I can promise you'll definitely get to see them next chapter, up next week.

Until then...


	26. Miracles, and Other Inconveniences

Chapter 26, Miracles, and Other Inexplicable Inconveniences

 **A/N:** Welcome back to Radiant Creatures! A fairly straightforward chapter this week, including some much needed character interactions! I've been writing this story using the 'soap wheel' format popular with daytime dramas. That is, there's a revolving cycle of stories that are played in, featured prominently while smaller stories act as subplots, only to be wrapped up and succeeded by the subplots, who now have bigger priority as new subplots form. And on and on. It's why these last few chapters have had more emphasis on, say, Squall, Selphie and Celeste (you'll be seeing two of them this chapter, ahem) and less on Sora and Riku.

Eventually, this too will chance. It's on me to make each character as enjoyable as possible. So apologies if you're stuck reading someone you're less invested in. I can only promise you that all threads come together in the end.

Enjoy, guys!

* * *

The photo on the record sleeve was foggy and faded, the wild-haired woman clouded in shadow, bent over a piano. She was a mysterious figure, ethereal and beautiful, while not being precisely 'good looking'.

Celeste had, once upon a time, spent long hours studying the woman on the sleeve, listening to the record on dreary summer days, letting Nyro's sultry, mournfully exuberant voice carry her away to a different place, a fantasy place, maybe, but one where the world was less confusing. No less sad, but less lonely.

Any woman could've been Laura Nyro. _She_ might've been Laura Nyro. There was a magic in that.

Even now, Celeste studied the picture, letting the vinyl scratch softly on Cid's turntable, that rich, full, yet peculiarly delicate voice seeming to fill her every cell.

" _And when I die/And when I'm dead, dead and gone/There'll be one child born/And the world will carry on._ "

The little locker was awash in pink. Little ribbons added unnecessary flair to the sides, the inside of the door. There were a few photographs, a high school graduation photo, a picture of two pleasant middle-aged people Celeste figured were parents. No young man. No red scarf.

Sighing, Celeste gently peeled the graduation photo from where it was lightly affixed to the wall. She looked so young...she _was_ so young. This picture couldn't be more than five, six years old.

Celeste had been only a year younger when she'd become a mother. Sometimes 17 felt like just yesterday, and others likes an entire world away.

"Celeste?"

She turned around, tensing for only a second before she saw who it was standing in the kitchen doorway, "Tiana. Hi."

"Didn't think I'd find anyone here," she wasn't dressed for work, not surprisingly. She looked over at the record player, then to Celeste, "Cid says we're closed, he usually means it."

"Oh, Cid isn't here," she shook her head, "He meant what he said about the...day of mourning."

"Ah," Tiana nodded, the rest of her question going unasked, not that Celeste didn't understand what it was.

"So why am I here?" she prompted. Tiana nodded.

Celeste indicated the tiny cardboard box on the counter beside her, "Figured someone had to go through Aerith's locker. Get her...things together."

"That's...that's thoughtful of you," Tiana nodded, her big brown eyes beginning to well up, "I-I'm sorry..."

"Oh, honey..." Celeste put the box aside, crossed over to her and placed both hands on Tiana's shoulders, "Don't be."

"It's just..." she shook her head, dabbing gently at her tears, "It doesn't feel real. Just...just _yesterday_ we were at that stupid school assembly and...and now...it's like the whole world's gone crazy. Nothing makes any sense..."

"I understand," said Celeste, deciding she'd spare the poor girl any of the many assorted gorier details she had on the more specific nonsensical intricacies of this mess.

Tiana looked the box over, "So...when you've got everything together..."

"I checked with Cid. Her parents live in a retirement community up in Missoula. I guess I'll just...mail it. They shouldn't have to come all the way down here for..." she felt her throat tightening up, "For this."

Tiana nodded. She seemed for a while to be debating whether or not to speak, setting her bag down in a vacant chair,"So...full disclosure?"

"Of course."

"That's why I'm here too," she nodded, "Packing up my locker."

Celeste cocked an eyebrow, "Packing up? You're leaving?"

"It's not official yet, and...believe me, I don't like leaving you alone at this place..."

"Honey, it's got nothing to do with _me_."

Tiana sighed, "I just can't stay here anymore. You get that, right?"

Celeste made as if to protest, to argue the point, but she couldn't. She knew too well what she meant. It was a sad truth, but no less true...

" _My troubles are many/They're as deep as a well/I can swear there ain't no heaven, but I pray there ain't no hell/Swear there ain't no heaven, pray there ain't no hell/But I'll never know by living, only my dying will tell..._ "

"Yes," she said at last, "I understand. It can't be easy, every day's some new nightmare..."

"Forget it. Sure, I look over my shoulder when I get on the train, but that's nothing new. But when I go home, when I get home...when I come into work?" she sighed heavily, "There's something going on around here, Cel, I don't have to tell you that."

"Sora, all these girls...now Aerith," Celeste sighed, "You're right, you don't have to tell me a thing. And Tiana, I understand..."

"But why do I have to run away?" she shrugged, smiling bitterly, "Listen, it's not like I'm gonna tear out right away..."

"The Dalman?"

"Still trying to figure out how to break _that_ one to Cid. I owe it to Odie to play for more than just a week..."

"And it pays better than tips, too?" Celeste smiled knowingly.

"A girl has to take care of herself."

"She does," Celeste agreed, "And you owe it to yourself to feel safe. We all do. There's nothing to be ashamed of in it."

Tiana chuckled noncommittally, "Then why does it feel like running away?"

Celeste sighed, putting the box of Aerith's things aside to face her pending former colleague, "Quirk of the mind. So many of us are brought up to look out for everybody _but_ ourselves. The tiniest selfish act sends us right to self-hating."

She considered Aerith, her perpetual waiting, her constant, sad hope that one day, it would all pay off, and she could go on living her life. But until that time, until her prince came back to her, it was all she could do to wait.

"You ever consider it?"

"Consider what? Leaving?"

"Well, not _now_ , obviously..." Tiana sighed, "But, you know, when you get Sora back... You ever thought of just clearing out and..."

"It's tempting," she said, "Leaving now and never looking back. If it weren't for Sora. He has a life here. Friends, commitments...he belongs here. It would be thoughtless of me to uproot him now."

"Even after everything?" Tiana hesitated, "I'm...I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..."

"No," Celeste shook her head, "No, you have a point. Maybe he doesn't want to look at this place ever again. Maybe every inch of it, every childhood hangout, every football field, every single place he and Kairi ever went together...maybe it's all tainted now."

Her beautiful, innocent, _brave_ boy, who smiled at everything, faced every challenge head-on, _loved_ so much that it didn't seem possible.

Would he be the same boy when he came out of all this? _Could_ he be? Would she even recognize him?

"But even then..." she continued, "I can't see us leaving."

"No?"

"I thought about it, once. Many years ago, when he was very little. I figured by then I'd have to do the job of raising him alone. And this place...there were too many memories here. It had to be easier to just strike out somewhere, try our luck... Start over again."

Her mother had thought her a coward, Celeste knew. She'd never said that to her face, of course. They'd never _spoken_ to each other again, not after that fiasco of a custody proceeding had ended, not after the joke she'd made of Celeste, day after day, just to prove a point.

"But there's something about this place...this town. There's a pull to it, something powerful. As frightening, as _ugly_ , as depressing as it gets sometimes...there's a beauty here. I don't think you could find it anywhere else."

"Like magic?" asked Tiana.

"I know, it sounds silly..."

"No," she said sadly, "I know what you mean."

"It seems almost cowardly," she said, "Blaming some made up aura for why I can't leave, but...to be honest, I can't imagine living anywhere else. But, of course, if Sora didn't want to stay here another second, I wouldn't blame him. And we'd go, find another place, no problem."

"But you don't think he will?"

"I don't even know if I'll ever see him again," she said softly, feeling her voice begin to break, "How can I think about taking him anywhere until I do?"

But she bit back her tears. They were useless, and she'd cried too often in so short a time. She was sick of this weeping, this breaking down, this feeling of perpetual uselessness. Like she was just watching as the world fell to pieces around her.

There had to be some better way. She could not believe things were fixed like this, forever.

 _You_ could _help. You know enough about what happened to Aerith, at least. You know who killed her, you even know where Sora is...or was._

But she could tell no one. She could imagine why, and each imagining was more alarming than the last.

Tiana was going through her own locker, humming along with the record.

" _Loving you so/I was to blind to see you/Letting me go/But now that you've set me free... It's gonna take a miracle_..."

"Yes, it's gonna take a miracle," Celeste said softly, turning Aerith's photo over in her hand, "To make me love someone..."

Her finger brushed against something. A piece of paper, a corner, hastily folded up and tucked away.

"...new," she finished, trailing off. There was a folded up piece of loose leaf paper, taped neatly to the back of the picture.

 _It's none of your business. The girl is dead now, there's nothing more you can do. Just leave it..._

But she couldn't. Not after the _last_ letter, all Milo had told her, and all he hadn't learned yet. This wasn't a matter of protecting Aerith's privacy anymore. She'd kept so much to herself, and had thought herself better for it. Maybe Aerith was like her that way, maybe she'd been so concerned with giving too much away, feeling too strongly, that she'd never really grown up at all.

Maybe Sora had been right all along. She did lie about who she really was, to protect him, so people wouldn't worry.

And, like Aerith, maybe that habit would end up bringing her nothing but pain.

She took the letter and unfolded it.

It was written in pencil, faded to smoky gray. The handwriting was spaced out, a bit big. Not sloppy, but not the handwriting of someone who particularly enjoyed the craft.

' _I don't know when you'll find this letter. Maybe you won't. You may not even want to read it. That's okay. I know I hurt you. I can't expect you to understand something I can't understand myself. But I can't live the rest of my life not knowing who I am and why. One day, I hope you'll forgive me. But I understand if you don't. I can't say how long I'll be gone, or if I'll ever come back, so I won't ask you to wait for me. You deserve better than that. I hope you find it._ '

There was no signature. Celeste didn't need one. She was sure Aerith hadn't needed it either.

"You okay, Celeste?"

She looked up suddenly, noticing Tiana, still busy over her locker, face worked in concern.

"Oh..." she nodded, "Yes, yes, I'm...I'm fine."

She folded the letter up again, held it in both hands, and slipped it back behind the picture of the girl it had been meant for, and who had wanted it both out of sight, and as close to her as possible.

" _Yes, it's gonna take a miracle/Yes, it's a gonna a miracle...to make me love someone new/Cause I'm crazy for you_..."

* * *

The voices were quiet now. They had been for a while, as easily as if a switch had been pulled, ensuring their silence. Riku wished he could believe they were truly silent, never to bother him again. He wished he could believe that.

He wished he could believe this was all some dream, some horrible nightmare. He knew what he had done. That was the worst thing. He knew what had happened, how he'd done it. He could not understand why, but he knew it had happened.

And he'd been helpless to resist it, to fight, to come back to himself.

Maybe there was no self to come back to. Maybe this was it. This was him. Had always been him.

He remembered the fear in those big eyes, the petrified stillness in that bandaged body, the soft breaths, whimpers as air was slowly choked from her lungs.

He had _done_ that. And how could he be surprised? He'd killed already, why not again?

His thoughts were muddled, dark, confused. He felt small and frightened, weak. Nothing felt right. All he could do was think over every minute occurrence he could remember, trying to think about his part in it, the three parts that, apparently, made him up.

 _Shooting the tires out of the Bentley_. Yeah, that had been sudden, quick. He'd suddenly found himself a quick shot, his anger supplanted by a quiet fury. He hadn't learned that, it had been a part of him. Cruella had been surprised enough.

Had she _known_? She was the one who told him the ghost story about Maleficent and her niece anyway. Did she know about the gardener, Terra...his father? Had she been trying to tell him that, too?

And again... Holding that knife to Hades's throat. There had been some tiny voice in his head, urging him to do it...then a snatch of some other conversation, some promise that he couldn't, wouldn't let something happen to someone. That he would protect her.

Aqua.

Her too...he remembered the tears that had overwhelmed him when he'd found her in the Grotto, the inexplicable sadness, his desire to help her. And the way she'd crawled off, whispering 'No, no, no...'

She had known. She'd recognized him. Maybe not as her son, but as the man she loved. The man who'd killed her.

What had it been like? Terra and Aqua, Mom and Dad, locked up together for who knew how long, Terra promising Aqua he'd get her out of this.

He must have felt so guilty, falling for Maleficent's bait, killing Aurora... Failing to keep Aqua safe would have destroyed him.

He ended up destroying her. Had he known what he was doing, when Xehanort finally took over? Did he _feel_ it? It couldn't have happened all of a sudden. Slow, agonizing, inevitable. Like a cancer.

She must have known something was wrong. Then, when it was too late...she'd tried to beg him, to make him come back to his senses, to remember who he was, who _she_ was.

Maleficent hadn't begged. Maybe she'd seen it coming. She was nothing if not dramatic, maybe she could see the irony in the lab experiment she'd picked for a chosen son using his newfound capabilities to take out the woman who'd made him possible, even if she hadn't directly created him.

He couldn't hate her, though. Not anymore. Not when he could _see_ the pale, gasping face, the wide eyes, the desperate working of her mouth, the feel of a rapidly straining throat beneath his fingers.

In the end, maybe she'd _expected_ him to kill her. Maybe it was worth it knowing only that her gamble all those years ago had paid off: she'd created the very monster she'd been charged with creating, even if she got nothing out of it but a premature death.

He could almost hear her voice, her dry, bloodless chuckle, " _Oh, Riku...such introspection. Don't you see? There was never anything in it for_ me _. All a mother wants is for her children to reach their full potential. And, my dear,_ didn't _you?_ "

The lights turned on above him. Riku opened his eyes with a gasp, taking in the now very familiar bright white light, the gleaming walls and ceiling of one of the Mansion's very many exam rooms.

Still breathing raggedly, Riku tried to sit up, feeling an unusual coolness against his skin. He was in an undershirt, starched and white. Not the dirty, sweaty gray one he'd been wearing a whole week straight. Then, below...

"Welcome back," a cool, assured voice, "To whom am I speaking?"

Riku turned to his right, asking in halting tones, "...where are my pants?"

"Tumble dry, medium heat, I even tossed in some dryer sheets," Zexion, the unflappable, inexplicably young intern sounded like he was smirking, even as his face was completely impassive beneath a curtain of steel blue hair, "You _are_ aware of how bad you smelled, yes?"

Riku blinked, aware that he was, at least, still wearing his own boxers. Zexion seemed to understand, "I didn't take a peek, promise. The thrill of being everybody's warden wears off remarkably fast under the influence of a Judy Collins soundtrack."

"Where is she?"

Zexion looked up from his clipboard, "Lives in France, I think. They're warming up to the whole folk scene there..."

" _The woman_? The one I..."

"Ah. That," Zexion had begun notetaking, "So it _is_ Riku I'm speaking to?"

"Where is she? Is...is she okay?"

It was a short time before Zexion answered, "She fell about twelve stories in a confined space in the dark and wasn't recovered for a few hours after the fact. Just breathing at this point is nothing short of miraculous."

"But I...I..."

"She'll be fine. You'll notice certain precautions have been taken, to prevent another incident."

Riku realized what he was referring to, the sturdy leather straps on his ankles, his wrists. Tighter now than they'd been.

"Credit where it's due, I suppose, getting as far as you did. Was it your father at the helm, or our Lost Prophet?"

Riku was tempted not to answer, but there was no point in that. He would still be locked up here, at these peoples' mercy. Shows of bravado weren't going to do him any good.

"I...I don't know," he said at last, "Maybe both."

"Both?" Zexion wrote something else down.

"What are you doing to me?" Riku asked, "What's the plan, what..what do you want to _get_ out of this?"

Another smirk that wasn't quite a smirk lit up Zexion's face, "You mean why we you've suffered back-to-back abductions?"

"You didn't abduct. We..." Riku stopped himself, "I came here on my own."

"Of course you did. Because one of your fellow travelers has a score to settle with us. Which is all very well, because _he_ knows something we don't. And we are _very_ interested in learning it."

Riku sighed, leaning his head back against the cot, "And that woman? What about her, why is she here?"

"You don't expect me to answer that, do you? I'm breaking several rules just talking to you right now. I don't expect you to understand, but it's a considerable risk upsetting Vexen during _Hearts and Souls_."

Riku let out an aggrieved sigh, looking around the room. He wasn't sure if it was the same one he'd come to in before, with Sora...

Sora.

"Can you answer something else, then?"

Zexion tapped the tip of his pen against his lip, as if deep in thought. At last he said, "...perhaps."

"When...when I got here. There was this...this guy, I guess he works with you..."

"This is about the beating you gave Xaldin?"

"When we...when we fought," he spoke haltingly, "There was something..."

"Something unusual? Like how you swung around the room on a weaponized chandelier? Yes, we noticed."

"That's not it. I also...I ripped the doors open, like it was nothing."

"Yes, very impressive feats, all around."

"It's quick, it's sudden, I didn't even have to think about. I was just...stronger and...and faster. Is that...is that because...because I'm three people?"

Zexion looked at him very seriously for about ten seconds before bending over in a fit of laughter, rocking back and forth, hooting uproariously, "Oh...oh, _please_! Three people?"

"Well...aren't I?"

"You share a collective _conscience_ with two others. You are still _one_ body. In any case, one of those two consciences is a sectarian cancer patient, so he wouldn't be very useful for extreme stunts."

"I _know_ what I did. That's not normal..."

"No," said Zexion enigmatically, "It isn't. "

He sighed softly, crossing a little closer to the chair, reaching out to run a hand along Riku's arm. He shrank away, glaring at him, "Back off."

"What? You've been all but encased in a bubble for two days, I should think you'd be _starving_ for some human companionship."

With that, he undid the strap binding his wrist. Riku felt his freed hand drop off the side of the chair as Zexion moved around to the other side, undoing the other strap, then going down to his ankles.

"I...I don't..."

"Elevator's at the end of the hall to the right. Door _H_."

"What is this?"

"I told you. Human companionship."

Riku stood, feed cold on the smooth tile floor, "There's got to be a catch."

"Of course there is," Zexion shrugged, "Will that stop you?"

"I could throw you into the wall right now, you know? We're agreed I can do that..."

"My heart races just thinking about it. Come on, go. It's November sweeps, so Vexen won't be leaving that T.V anytime soon."

"Can I get some clothes, at least?"

"You're _wearing_ clothes," Zexion pointed out, indicating the shirt and underwear as if that should be enough.

Second thoughts (as well as third and fourth thoughts) swirled around in Riku's mind, but he turned on his heel anyway, leaving the room and starting down the hallway.

It felt like he was being watched. Maybe that was the point. This was all a loyalty test, or some psychological experiment. Ten to one, the only thing behind Door H was another solitary confinement unit. Maybe cozier than the one he'd just left.

He reached the patch of bare wall, the little button that indicated the hidden elevator entrance. He called the elevator, looking up and down the corridor. As much as he wanted to turn, to go back, he found he couldn't, just as he couldn't keep himself from going into the Underworld, on the slim hope that he might find Sora and Kairi there.

Well, he'd found Sora. If only he could have any faith in his hunches.

The elevator had one speed only: glacially slow, and one direction as well...straight down. It got colder, frigidly cold, in fact. Riku could feel goosebumps prickling up on his skin. He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself, trying to force an air of calm.

The doors opened to darkness. Just a cavernous, dark hole. Riku stepped out onto the concrete floor, seeing his breath mist up in the air ahead of him. There were doors all around the room, thick steel doors arranged one after the other in a ring. On closer inspection, they were lettered in faint white paint, as if sprayed on through cheap plastic stencils. There were ten doors, maybe twelve. Yes...twelve. The elevator was positioned between doors _A_ and _L_.

Steeling himself, Riku made his way to Door _H._ There was a handle, lightly frosted over. A big iron instrument. Riku suspected sufficient force would be needed to budge it.

"Come on, super strength," he muttered, taking the handle in both hands and pulling, straining, grunting between thin lips. The thing didn't budge. Either he wasn't strong enough, or there was a more intricate way of budging it. Or both.

Sighing, he felt his way along the door, looking for some groove, an imperfection, anything he could manipulate, some secret panel or a switch or...

"There," a tiny rectangular panel in the door. There was a little latch at the side, which Riku got to work on at once, turning it and immediately sliding the panel inward. It was a tiny space, maybe big enough to reach through, maybe get a hold on the handle from the inside...

So Riku put his hand through the gap and almost immediately found his arm grabbed by _something_ on the other end.

He let out a cry of fear and surprise, feeling himself yanked toward the door, the side of his face coming abruptly against the metal, close to the panel, eye to eye with a big blue...

"Sora?" he breathed.

"Riku?" the expression in his eyes changed at once as relief spread into his voice, "Man, am I glad to see you."

"You're...you're _glad_ to see me?"

"Don't make fun of me, I've been going crazy."

"Believe me, I know the feeling," he was surprised to find he was smiling, his breath coming down to normal, feeling inexplicable warm enough, despite the reality of this veritable freezer, "What, they just threw you in here?"

"Try literally. You know the dude with the dreads and the earrings? Real Mr. Personality type of guy."

"Xaldin? Yeah, I...I know him."

"Guess he figured I'd make less trouble down here. What about you, what happened after..."

"After," Riku sighed, "I...I wish I knew."

 _Don't. Don't tell him, you'll just freak him out. He's freaked out enough, and you wouldn't even know how to explain it all anyway..._

"There's something going on with me," he said at last, "I...I don't know how to describe it."

"Yeah...neither can I."

"What?"

Sora shrugged, "I've been trying to write it off as just a side effect of this place. Maybe something those creeps are doing. But I've been feeling...weird. Not myself."

"Not yourself..." Riku felt his heart in his mouth, "Shit. Sora, I'm..."

"Listen, Riku, if you try to apologize, I swear to God, I will punch you through this hole. It's not your fault."

"You wouldn't say that if you..."

"Hell yes, I would. Unless we're forgetting, _I'm_ the one that split us up back there in the first place."

"Sora..."

"Besides, it's _me_ they want."

"What?"

"I know, shocker, right? I'm a real big deal to these psychos. I didn't even think I'd find you here..."

"What do they want you for?"

"You're asking me? I've asked every one of these creeps I could find, and all I'm getting is I'm some kinda key."

"A key?"

"Key, _X_ -Corp, I guess they think they're pretty funny," Sora sighed, "What about you?"

"What about..." Riku trailed off, "They...they want me too."

"Huh," Sora sighed, "Yeah, I...I think maybe one of them said something like that. They just grabbed me by accident. Again. Then, surprise, surprise, I end up being important."

 _You should tell him. He has a right to know. If you can't tell him, then what's the point? What's the point of_ any _of this?_

"Oh crap," Sora said suddenly.

"What is it?"

"I...I can't forget..." he was smiling, Riku could tell, some big, doofy smile like he couldn't be surprised in his less-than-steel trap memory, "Riku, your friend..."

"My friend?"

"The jackass that hit me with his car, he was here."

A soft, burgeoning warmth began to surge within Riku, "Axel?" the name was a whisper on his lips, feeling like a foreign word, something he'd forgotten.

"Axel's here? You saw him?"

"Yeah."

"But I don't..."

"He was looking for someone else, didn't know you were here until I said you might be."

The idea of Axel, so close by, in a place like _this_ felt wrong, ugly, impossible. Everything about this place, it's iciness, its sterility, it went against everything Axel _was_.

"What happened to him? Is he okay?"

"I wish I knew," Sora shrugged, "I think he got out, though. Don't know if he found his friend or not..."

"Friend..." Riku was quiet, "Did he say what friend?"

"Maybe. I dunno, man, sorry, I just...it got a little weird for me then."

"Weird? Like...weird, how?"

Sora considered, "Remember I said I've been feeling weird?" he hesitated, "This...this is gonna sound pretty stupid..."

"Sora, you'd have to tell me _a lot_ for anything to sound stupid at this point."

Sora laughed bitterly, "Well...we were on our way out. He'd cut me loose, we were running away... Got into an elevator. Not that one," he nodded in the general direction of the lift Riku had taken, "The one upstairs. We were gonna climb out through one of those hatches. And then..."

He paused, and when he spoke again it was subdued, even a little embarrassed, "I never felt anything like that before. Just...this pounding headache. But it wasn't just that, I felt...like...like everything was gone, you know? I couldn't get up, I couldn't move..."

Riku thought of the woman in her bandages, sprawled on a cot, still as a statue, unable to do anything to resist his hands on her throat...

"It scared me," Sora said softly, "It _still_ scares me. The thing passed and...and it felt like I'd run fifty laps barefoot."

"What happened to Axel?" Riku asked in a ghost of a voice.

"He tried to call after me," said Sora, "Gave up."

Riku looked up sharply, "He _left_?"

"Well, don't get angry on my account..."

"He just _left_ you?"

"Hey, it's...it's not like I was making it easy for him."

"Easy..." Riku scoffed, "That's Axel, if it's not easy, it's not..." he stopped himself realizing how quickly he'd been speaking, how hot his face had become. He let out a breath.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I know you told me not to say it, but I am. You don't...you don't deserve anything that's happened to you. And none of it _would've_ happened if I'd just...if I'd minded my own business."

"Nah," Sora nodded, "Probably not."

There was a short pause before he added, "But...hey. It's not all your fault."

"No?"

"Dude, you saved my life," Sora smiled, but there was a sincerity in his voice, a softness to his eyes, "You could've just run off and left me down there, but you got me out. Hell, I'd probably be dog food right about now, if you hadn't. And...and you bandaged up my leg..."

"Despite your...aggressive protests," Riku said with a smile of his own.

"I should've thanked you sooner. Me being some whiny asshole, that's...that's not me. Not who I wanna be, anyway."

"You had a good reason not to thank me."

"Oh yeah?" Sora sighed, "When I just...left you like that, that night? On the floor, crying my name..."

"I wasn't cry..." Riku stopped himself, "You're not responsible for my feelings, Sora."

"Maybe not, but I'm responsible for acting like a total shithead. And that's what I did to you. Who knows, maybe if I hadn't, we wouldn't be here right now."

Sora turned his shoulder toward him, leaning against the door on his side, "I've been going over in in my head a _lot_ since it happened. Yeah, I was surprised, caught off guard, whatever. But...really I guess, most of all..." he trailed off.

"Go on," prompted Riku, "Say it."

"...I was scared," he nodded, "Shocked. But scared too. Like I...I couldn't make any sense of it. The death matches, jumping off a moving train, sure, but...I was _so_ scared. It didn't even seem real. Like all of this had happened, just because...because you _liked_ me. So, yeah, I was angry too. Because, it doesn't matter how much you like someone, if it causes that much trouble, you should just back off, leave it alone, right?"

He sighed, "But that's not how it works. And...you know, I believe you. You had nothing to do with what happened to Kairi. It just...happened. And you can't choose who you like. So I'm sorry too, for treating you like that."

Riku bowed his head, his breath caught in his throat, "Apology accepted. What about mine?"

"Eh, your apology's a stupid one."

"I can say the same about yours. Come on, let's...let's make it even."

And Sora smiled, "Sure. Apology accepted."

He balled one hand into a fist, reaching it through the gap. Riku eyed it, "...um?"

"What? Fist bump too lame for you Earthshakers?"

Riku smiled, laughing softly, "Not a chance."

They fist bumped, Sora bringing his hand back with a muffled explosion noise, "So...friends?"

"Yeah," agreed Riku, "Friends."

"Sweet," he sighed, "Just remembered."

"What?"

"Everything still sucks."

Riku looked around the room, "...yeah. Yeah it does."

"But we're cool, so..." he shrugged, "Not _as_ bad."

"Is there...um...is there, like, a handle or something on your side?"

"You think I'd still be here if there _was_?"

"Fair point. I just figure, the handle on this side's pretty big, there's got to be a catch or something on your end."

"Even if there is, I can't budge it," he paused, "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"They must be treating you a _bit_ better, if you were able to come down here."

"Um...kind of? I was kinda...let loose?"

"By _Vexen_?"

"Nah, the intern."

"Oh, _that_ guy. He thinks he's some real smartass."

"Got that impression, yeah," he sighed, "I think he wanted me to see you. I mean...to talk."

"Nice of him?" Sora posed it as a question.

"I haven't decided yet. But...I _am_ glad I got to see you."

"Yeah," Sora agreed, "So am I. And...uh...one other thing..."

"Sure. Whatever you want."

"I...I don't know how much you remember, but...um..." his speech had become faltering, unsteady, it was clear this was taking a lot of effort, "Last time we saw each other..."

"I remember," Riku nodded, feeling _he_ was getting red now, on top of everything else, "You played flag football?"

"My Mom wanted me in extracurricular activities," Sora grumbled, "Besides, I was _good_."

"But you still ended up comatose?"

"So you heard _everything_?"

"Everything. And...and I felt everything too."

Sora grimaced and Riku sighed, "Okay, so... _maybe_ not the best way to refer to it..."

"I just...I guess I wasn't thinking. Well, I...I _know_ I wasn't when I...when I, you know..." he added, lower octave, " _kissed_ you. It's just...I got all caught up in the story and...and like I told you, I...I was feeling pretty shitty about leaving you behind like that, and..." his voice broke, "And I really miss my Mom, so...so talking about her and...and me..."

"Hey," Riku interrupted him, "It's okay. You...you don't have to explain. I get it."

"You do?" Sora cocked an eyebrow, "Lucky."

"Sometimes we feel things that are...unexplainable. Better to _feel_ them then press them down inside."

"Who told you that?"

"Axel."

"Ah, what does he know?" but Sora was smiling, "But, yeah, I...I don't want you to think I was..."

"Taking advantage?" Riku finished, "Come on."

"...I...I wasn't trying to...to dick you around or..or anything."

"It's cool, Sora. Hey, it woke me up, didn't it?"

He was trying to play it off. Act like it really had just been some nice, pleasant, but brief moment, mostly a misunderstanding. Would that it were so easy, so simple. Riku could still remember how that kiss had _felt_ , like a bath of hot water after an arduous, dirty day. He remembered opening his eyes, feeling clear, conscious... _awake_ , truly and fully himself for the first time since the Hollow, at least.

And maybe for the first time in a while before that. Opening his eyes, seeing Sora there, face lighting up in incredulous disbelief that he'd woken up, that the kiss had worked.

He'd felt hope again. He'd felt like a kid, like himself.

Sora was scratching behind his neck, what little Riku could see of his face looking shifty, anxious, "So...um...can I you something? Like...a personal question?"

"Um...yeah," Riku nodded, "Sure, whatever you need."

"How did you know?"

Riku waited for some further clarification on the question, but got nothing, "How do I...sorry, how did I know _what_?"

"I mean, I know we met during a tag game and everything, but...we were, like, seven. I mean...how did you know you were...you know..."

Riku realized, "You can say it, as far as I know it's not illegal. And even if it was, our whole situation probably fucks the Geneva Conventions right up, so we get some slack."

"Gay. Like...how does that happen?"

Riku blinked. Slowly, a smile began to spread on his face.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing, just...I dunno, you talk about it like I caught something."

"Sorry. I...I don't mean it if I sound, you know... _gross_ , I just..." he shrugged, "I'm curious."

Riku thought for a short while, "Well...it doesn't have to do with you, for one thing."

"Really?"

"What, are you disappointed?"

"No!" he answered, maybe too quickly, "It's just, you know, I thought I was this big epiphany you had, or...or something..."

"Sora, I _liked_ you then because you were kind to me. You made me a part of something, you wanted to be my friend. We were kids, I didn't think of you in...in any other way. For, like...a while."

"Oh. Okay, I...I guess that makes sense."

"I mean, if you want to hear the story, I...I guess I can tell you..."

"Well, yeah. If, you know, if it's not too much..."

Riku took a deep breath, "Okay, so...full disclosure, I haven't told anybody this before."

"Man, I'm in _no_ position to go gabbing to anybody else, so your secret's safe with me. Not that I'd tell anybody even if we _weren't_ stuck in this..."

"I get it. Thanks," he cleared his throat, "So, um...coupla years ago, I joined up with the Earthshakers. I'd gotten Betty..." he paused, the thought of his own abandoned bike giving him an uncomfortable feeling, "my _bike_ a little while before that. Maleficent's idea of a birthday gift was letting me take some cash out of the trust fund."

"I wouldn't have complained."

"Did I say I did?" Riku smiled despite himself, despite the mere mention of Maleficent's name. Here, even in this dark, cold place, the thought of Maleficent and of what had happened to her, what _he_ had done felt a world away. Like it had happened to someone else, someone else had done it, not him.

"I thought it would be the _coolest_ thing in the world to have a motorcycle," Riku said wistfully, smiling softly. He could almost feel the touch of his long, unkempt hair against his forehead, the smell of engine oil in his nose, savoring the faint popping of the too-hot sun against the concrete and asphalt of the streets.

"Being able to just...climb on and go anywhere you want, be anybody. Get away," he ran his hand down one bare leg, feeling the little prickles on his thigh, surprised at how suddenly he didn't feel as cold as he'd been, "I really wanted to get away."

"But you didn't?"

"Well...I guess I did, kind of. In a way. I met Axel. He was still kinda new to town back then. He's...he's from Twilight, originally, transferred over from that Earthshaker branch to the Destiny one. Guess we were both kinda lost. But you'd never know Axel was lost at all. He's got a...a confidence to him, a swagger. Nothing can stop him."

"I got the impression when he ditched me in a stalled elevator," but Sora was smiling, "But whatever, that's over now."

Riku sighed, "I still don't get why he took such a shine to me. At first I thought he was just taking advantage of the socially crippled rich kid, but...but he stuck up for me. He believed in me, Sora. Said I could have a life with the Earthshakers, if I wanted to. A family."

" _I always believed family's who you make it,_ " Axel had told him, getting off his bike long enough to shake some dust of the road from his hair, " _Don't get blushy on me, now, Riku, but...I've always wanted a little brother._ "

"My initiation ceremony was...the hottest day of the summer," Riku continued, "And Seifer wanted it that way. I don't think he trusted me, much."

"This is the guy who admitted to kidnapping Kairi, right?"

"He's got no room to talk," Riku agreed, "But he's always been...choosy about who he lets in the gang."

"So what did he make you do? You know, if that thing about driving the bikes into the lake is just a stupid story."

Riku chuckled, "Well, um...it's kind of silly saying it..."

"It's hazing, so that's expected."

"We'd have to take our bikes and...er...drag them up the Overlook. To the top."

"Seriously?"

Riku nodded, "We slipped once, or...or beat up the bike too much, that's it, test was over."

"And you did it?"

Riku sighed, remembering the thick cord around his waist, the other end affixed to Betty's handlebars. Not that she'd been called Betty then, or...really ever, until a week and a thousand years ago. The sun had beat down on him, as had the eyes of the crowd, laughing, cheering.

You were supposed to dig your heels into the dirt, it made it easier to climb. But it also made it harder to move.

His breath had been thin, sweat sticking to every inch of him. The world itself seemed to pitch every which way around him, the bike groaning like some tremendous monster behind him.

He'd taken off his shirt before starting, knowing things would get hot, that he'd be thankful for the decision later. But his skin blistered beneath the sun. Every second that passed, he wanted to scream, to cry out, to fall to his knees and sleep forever.

"I thought I was gonna die," Riku said softly, "And...at one point, I just stopped. What was the point, right? It was just stupid game, a show. None of them really cared if I did it, if I made it, if I became one of them. I was just an act."

He sighed, "And I stopped, just flagging there, about halfway up. Every part of me hurt, all my muscles just... _screaming_ , begging me to stop, to just sit down, have a rest. All I could think was what a giant idiot I was for even trying all this in the first place. And then I look up, and there's Axel."

"Cheering you on?"

"Making a giant jackass out of himself," Riku smiled, "I guess he knew I was nearly tapped out. Moment I stopped there on the hill, he runs forward, comes to my side... He couldn't touch the bike, that would've been cheating. But he touched me," he sighed, "Just...patted me on the shoulder, told me... that I could do it."

" _You've got this, man_ ," his face had shone with sweat, his eyes gleamed with a fiery vigor.

" _Doesn't...doesn't this break the rules?_ "

" _Seifer can try to stop me. I'm telling you, he's scared of me._ "

" _Axel..._ "

" _And even if you don't do it. Even if you can't..._ "

"Well, who gives a shit anyway?" Riku echoed him, turning to Sora, "That doesn't change a damn thing."

He pressed a hand to his mouth, "And...looking at him, there...the sun was behind him...he _glowed_ , almost, smiling at me...and I could feel his hand on me. Nothing else mattered. I looked at him, his smile, his confidence. His faith in me. I knew then. I knew what I was feeling, and I admitted it to myself."

There was a long silence before Sora asked, "So...what happened?"

"I dragged the bike to the top of the Overlook. Seifer wasn't happy, but I passed."

"No, I mean...with you and Axel?"

"What happened?" Riku sighed, "We're friends, Sora. Maybe best friends."

"But, but you just said..."

"I said I looked at him and I realized I _could_ love him. I think, maybe, somewhere I really do. But he's my friend. He's like my brother, and I hate him as much as I love him. But I _can't_ love him that way," he sighed, "But you asked when I knew I was gay. And that was when."

"Axel doesn't know?"

"Never thought he needed to," Riku shook his head, "It's just _me_ , just what I felt. I wasn't gonna drag him into it."

"Just like you weren't gonna drag _me_ into how you felt about... _me_ so you just followed me around and _imagined_ telling me?"

Riku sighed, "Yeah, well...I guess I've learned my lesson."

"I'm glad. Really, it's...it's no good just keeping that stuff to yourself. Whatever happened, whatever _happens_...I'm glad you told me."

Riku nodded, "So...what about you?"

"Huh?"

"I mean...if you're okay talking about it. When did _you_ first feel...straight?"

Sora smirked, "Wow, okay, um..." he shook his head, "Really?"

"Well, you just made me say it! It's the same thing, just swap the genders."

"Okay, okay..." he trailed off, "Well...it was with Kairi."

"Yeah?" Riku was surprised to find how easily he took that. And why shouldn't he? He knew the answer going in. It could be no surprise. It was good that it didn't feel like one.

"What exactly? Like, did you know when you first met her, or..."

"Dude..." Sora trailed off, "I mean..." he sighed, "I...uh...I dunno, it just..." he trailed off, wincing, "Just...um..."

"You okay?"

Sora nodded, "Just...just a little light..." he gasped, "...headed."

"Sora..."

"I'm...I'm o..." but the word dissolved into a long, low moan, "Oh, shit. No, no, no..."

"Sora!" Riku pressed himself against the door, "Sora, what's..."

"It's...it's..." his face was scrunched up, working furiously; Riku could see a vein in his forehead, throbbing, "...again. It's happening again..."

He cried out again, pressing both hands to his head. Riku peered through the slot, "What can I do? Sora, what can I do?"

"I...I can't..." he convulsed violently. Riku couldn't help himself, he reached through the slit, grasping at Sora's hand, cold and clammy as it was.

"D-don't leave me..." Sora panted, looking up at him.

"I won't," Riku promised, "I promise."

So he sat there, holding Sora's hand as he shook on the floor, pale and wan, eyes bleary, closing. In the near darkness, you could almost forget Sora was a person, not some sick animal, whimpering and mewling away.

Riku was aware of his heart pounding his his chest, his hand sweating against Sora's, his bare knees cold on the floor. He pressed his eyes shut, feeling Sora's fingers twitching through his, feebly, sporadic, growing stiller and stiller.

 _This is a charming sentiment, but foolhardy all the same_.

"No," he breathed, "No. you're gone. You left."

 _Did I? Who decided_ that _? Come now, get up, brush yourself off. There is nothing we can do here. As he is, he is beyond our help..._

"Shut _up_!" he roared, falling back against the floor, drawing his way away from Sora's, "Shut up..."

"Remember manners?" drawled a tired voice, "Neither do I, but it's a nice fantasy."

Riku look up, blinking through pained tears to observe the white-coated figure emerging from the elevator, "You."

"Me?" Vexen took a cursory glance toward Sora's door, "I hope you enjoyed your conjugal visit."

Riku got to his feet, fists balled up. Vexen merely stood in place, barely flinching.

 _Good idea. Word of advice, some monkey instinct tells you to swing a punch, you leave it be. There's a reason_ he _ended up in this position._

So Riku lowered the fist, struggling to monitor his breathing, "What was this? Some kind of test?"

"Test? Hardly. Only my intern thinks he's performing a public service, ferrying people in and out of this icebox. I can't imagine what he gets from it, other than a masochistic glee in forcing me to miss my singular indulgence."

"What's going on here?" Riku gestured around the icebox, "Is there someone behind each door?"

"There's room. Perhaps I can get you a space next to your little friend, I won't have to worry about missing my stories.

"Sora," Riku indicated the door, "He's hurt. Something's wrong with him..."

"Hm," Vexen looked past him, as if he could honestly see through that tiny slit from here. "Nothing more than he should be."

"What's that supposed to mean? What the hell are you..."

"Your _Sora_ is not in the best of states at the moment. I'd go so far as to say he's barely here at all."

"Then _do_ something about it! Don't you need him?"

Vexen turned to him, "Oh... _do_ something, eh? Everyone wants Vexen to _do_ something, and nobody ever bothers finding out what they can do first! How typical! Delightful! You make me sick. Into the elevator."

Riku made to resist, but Vexen gave him a none-too-gentle slap on the behind, ushering him in.

"I won't let you hurt him," Riku panted as the elevator began to rise.

Vexen let out a high, shrieky, bitter laugh, "Hurt him? Boy, I'm about the only one in this place concerned with keeping him _alive_."

* * *

"So...you like to draw?"

Namine looked up at Selphie, smiling with a patience that indeed would fit very well on somebody's mother. Or on Kairi herself, which was a whole _other_ enchilada.

"It's relaxing."

Selphie leaned forward, hoping to get a glimpse at the hospital-issue steno pad Namine had hijacked for the purpose of her doodling.

"Guess you need your rest, huh?" Selphie tried with a smile.

Namine had gone right back to sketching. Amphitrite had mentioned she'd been on I.V, but clearly that wasn't deemed a necessity anymore. There was a little bandage over her arm where the needle must have been stuck in. Selphie didn't like to look at it too long. Needles gave her the creeps, and she'd had enough creeps in the last 24 hours to last a lifetime.

"What did you say your name was, again?"

"Huh?" she looked up, surprised.

"I'm sorry...that was rude of me. I just...well, I don't think I remember you. I'm just...trying to put together as many pieces as I can."

"...oh," Selphie shifted around in her seat, looking uncomfortably around the room, "Well...I'm Selphie. We're...we're friends."

"Friends?"

"Yeah. Yeah, we go _way_ back. You used to help me with my homework, and I'd teach you how color coordinating worked, and we'd go out all the time with the neighborhood guys and be the sensible ones in the group. You were always a little more sensible."

Namine frowned, "Really?"

"Okay, a _lot_ more sensible."

"No, it's just...you must be 16? 17?"

"17," Selphie answered automatically, going rigid.

 _So much for your improv career._

"...just like you."

"Let me guess," Namine put the sketchpad down, artfully turning it over in her lap to hide whatever she'd been drawing, "My mother put you up to this."

Selphie couldn't keep her mouth from dropping open a little. No B.S in the world could ever get past Kairi.

"She...she just doesn't want you to be overwhelmed. It's really sweet, actually, _my_ Mom was _so_ hands off with me, it's a miracle I didn't elope with some kid from the softball field before sixth grade."

"Miracle, huh?" she sighed, toying with her pencil, "That's what she keeps calling it. A miracle. I guess it is, in a way. I honestly don't know enough about it to have much of an opinion."

Selphie wasn't sure what to say to that. Maybe this had been a bad idea. She'd thought maybe, now that enough time had passed, Namine ( _ahem_...sure, yeah, let's roll with that... _ahem_ ) would have begun to come to her senses, might've remembered who she was. Maybe her 'mother' ( _ahem_...yeah, sure, she doesn't look a day over 107... _ahem_ ) would've decided to just rip the Band-Aid off and tell her the truth to help her along.

But no, of course not. The one time everybody's Take No Bullshit Granny decided to preserve someone's feelings.

"It must have been really scary," Selphie offered.

"Not so much scary. Just...confusing. I'm sure if I knew more, I might be scared," she cleared her throat, "You...um...you don't have to walk around it, you know."

"Walk around what?"

"Well...obviously, you must care about me in...in _some_ way, if you came here. Unless my mother just pulled some random girl off the street..."

"Oh, honey, the last thing I am is _random_."

Namine let a tiny smile slip, which Selphie counted as a tiny victory, "I already know the truth."

"D-do you, now?"

"I know how much time it's been. How could I not? My mother's been at my bedside all day."

"So I guess it's no good telling you she just spent a lot of time in the sun? Not that she told me to say that!" Selphie added hastily, holding a hand up, "Or, you know, that you should tell her I said that."

Namine shook her head, "But it's not just that. So far I've met at least _one_ person willing to give me a part of the truth. I know how many years it's been. I don't know what my mother's trying to do not telling me. I...I know it's been a long time, but I'm not _stupid_. I thought she might remember that."

Namine felt a little pang in her heart, "Well, I'm no expert, but I _really_ believe she's just trying to ease you into all this."

"She was never this cautious," she shook her head, "Well, she _was_ but...not like this. I never knew a more honest person. Whenever I did something to upset her, or...or anybody really, she always found out...she'd go right up to me, look me in the eye and tell me what I'd done and how she felt about it."

"That's...that's how she is with all of us, really," said Selphie, "Honest, she hasn't...she hasn't changed that much."

"Well, what _has_? Please, if...you want to help me, I'd really appreciate just being spoken to like a person."

"Oh..." Selphie looked around, feeling uncomfortable. But she couldn't really refuse her, could she? She hadn't come here just to play a role, she was telling far too many lies to begin with, and when she wasn't telling lies she was worrying about the quality of the lies _other_ people were telling.

God help her, she was starting to miss honesty.

"Okay. Well...Destiny High almost won the state championship this year,"

"Oh, really?" she grinned, "That would've made two years in a row."

 _Where did_ she _come from, the Triassic?_

As if realizing what she said, Namine corrected herself, "Well...from where I'm standing. Lying, whatever."

"Yeah, my boyfriend Tidus," her smile may have spread an inch or two more at that, "He was really psyched about it. But um..." she trailed off, shrugging, "Extenuating circumstances."

"What kind of circumstances?"

"Oh. Like I said: extenuating."

The smile had vanished from Namine's face, "...oh. That game...that wasn't what I walked in on, was it?"

Selphie shook her head, "No, no, no. That was a week ago," she stopped herself, "Wow. That's right. A week ago."

She hadn't realized. Tonight would make seven since the game, the party at her place, that fight between Sora and Riku...Kairi disappearing.

"You seem sad," said Namine.

"Oh, it's...it's not about the game. I don't really care about football that much. It's just...well, you don't want to hear it."

"I think you'd be surprised at how much I _do_ want to hear. If you're comfortable."

Selphie wasn't comfortable. But she couldn't very well be comfortable saying nothing either.

"Well...okay," she nodded, "We lost the game because our running back, he was in a car accident."

"Oh, no," Namine's hand fluttered to her mouth. Kairi would never do that, the gesture was far too dainty. But the look in her eyes, the worry, the sincere _fear_ for someone she had...ostensibly...never met. That was all Kairi.

How could anybody say this was a different person?

"Oh, he was fine. But too injured to play. So another of my friends, Zack, he had to play in his place. And Zack's a great guy, really sweet, and he means well, but...he wasn't ready. We lost the game. And then.." she trailed off, "Well, a...a lot of things happened."

Namine was looking at her, a soft understanding in her eyes. She wouldn't make her say more, but Selphie couldn't look at her, looking so much like Kairi, and _not_ keep going.

"Some...friends of mine went missing," she explained, "Just...vanished without a trace. And nobody seems to know what happened to them or if they're ever going to come back, or...if they're even _alive_ and..."

Namine reached forward, putting a gentle hand on her arm, "I'm so sorry."

And, somehow, that made Selphie feel a little bit better. She nodded, mustering up a smile, "It's...it's alright. I'll be okay, it's not like it's me who's..."

But she stopped herself, pulling away a little. Namine was looking at her with such a heartfelt sincerity in her eyes, that Selphie felt to even continue on would cause her physical pain.

"But you must really miss your friends," she told her, in a voice so like Kairi's it made her want to cry and puke all at once.

Selphie nodded, "Yeah. I...I really do. I really..."

"Selphie," short, curt, tinged with a particular senior citizen brand of restraint, "I thought you might have left by now."

Selphie turned to look at Amphitrite, "I was about to. If you really..."

"You don't have to kick her out, Mother," said Namine firmly, "I appreciated the company."

"No," Selphie said quickly, getting to her feet, "No, she's...your _mother_ is right. They do that sometimes."

She looked Namine over, "Good luck. I hope...I hope you come back to normal soon."

"So do I," as if she really knew what that meant, what it implied.

It was more than Selphie could take. Collecting her bag, she got up and walked out into the hallway. Typically, she'd made it about halfway down the length of the passage before she heard the determined clacking of orthopedic shoes on the floor behind her.

"Don't you have gas to light?" Selphie asked flatly. She didn't need to be looking at Amphitrite to know how she was bristling.

"You must think me a singularly cruel person," she told her.

"No."

"Perhaps you can appreciate how difficult this is for me."

"I'm sure it's tough tamales for everyone."

"You are not a mother, you could not possibly understand..."

"Are we _really_ doing this?" Selphie asked, turning around, "Look, Gran..."

"Please, I'm not your _Gran_ , have you any idea how _demeaning_ it is being treated like some senile pet?"

"Namine...your daughter, right? How old is she?"

Amphitrite set her lips in a thin line, "I know what you're trying to prove. I am capable of simple arithmetic, especially as it concerns the age of the _baby_ I birthed."

"The girl in that hospital bed is _17_. Now, _I'm_ not all that good at math either, that's what Kairi was for..."

Amphitrite scoffed, Selphie went on, "But Kairi's 17 too, so..."

"You think me some delusional fool. Celeste thinks the same, I'm sure, but God knows she's polite enough not to tell me to my face."

"I'm starting to think manners might be a little overrated," said Selphie flatly.

"Certainly. I can at least appreciate your frankness, it's a useful trait in a girl. In any case, I know exactly how this all appears..."

"She must have died, right?" asked Selphie, "Namine?"

Amphitrite paled. Selphie crossed her arms, "I mean, I've known Kairi since we were kids, and you were the _only_ grown-up around the house, so..."

"Kairi was born premature," said Amphitrite softly, "It was a difficult labor, and Namine was left very weakened. For many days, the both of them were hanging by a thread. The number of times I was told to pray, to hope that they both would come out alright, that some miracle would occur," she laughed bitterly, "My husband believed in miracles. It was his most charming and his most damnable trait. But I was cursed with a certain amount of skepticism," she sighed, "It's no joy always seeing the bad over the good, but at least I wasn't caught by surprise when the inevitable happened."

Selphie shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, "I...I'm sorry."

"Of course you are," she said thinly, "But you're thinking something else, and that outweighs your apologies."

"Well...just that I was wondering..."

"Namine was 23 when she died. 17 came and went," she nodded slowly, as if to confirm the fact to herself, "So of course, you're skeptical. If my daughter is to suddenly return from the dead, why should she be my granddaughter's age, and not the age she was when she left me? Why not so many years older, as she should be, if she'd never died?"

"Well...I'm just saying, isn't it more likely that Kairi...that maybe something happened..."

"My dear girl," Amphitrite said bitterly, "Trust me when I tell you I know a great deal about what is _possible_. What you're hoping for and what _I'm_ hoping for are two very different things, but believe in me when I say neither of us want _your_ hope to come true. For all our sakes, and the girl in that bed more than any of us."

* * *

Larxene leaned against the bars of her cell, feeling her hair hanging into her eyes. It could probably do with a good washing. Cool and bitter as she was sure it must be outside, the TPD was awash in stinking, oppressive gas heat.

Or at least the cell block was.

"Is this the gimmick?" she called out through the bars, "Smoke me out? Threaten me with heat stroke, so I talk? What part of: ' _I've got nothing to talk about_ ' don't you punks understand?"

No answer. The station sounded quieter than usual, "What?" she demanded, "All out to lunch? Am I just supposed to starve? Is _that_ the idea?"

She kicked at the bars, forgetting for a moment she was still wearing 'sensible' (scoff, laugh, eye roll) office shoes, so the jolt ended up shaking her from toe to top.

"Fuck!" she swore, leaning back against the bars, panting shallowly, "Last I checked, I still have _rights_!You can't keep me here over 72 hours!"

 _This_ , at least, got an answer. The pixie-cut Asian girl who served as Saix's other half poked her head through the cell block doors, smiling wryly, "Duly noted. It hasn't even been 48 hours."

Larxene responded with a perhaps undignified stream of cuss words, gripping the bars with both hands, just letting loose with abandon.

Detective Kisigari remained utterly nonplussed, "You know, if you _really_ had nothing to do with your guy's death, you _can_ just tell us, you know? Then you don't have to count down the hours."

"You think I'm gonna fall for that one?"

"Of course not. You Earthshakers have mastered the art of verbal gymnastics. Really impressive, since you're named after one of those less graceful natural disasters."

"Ha ha."

Kisigari shrugged, "Your guy Axel gave me the _same_ treatment."

"Axel?" Larxene cocked an eyebrow, "He's my _guy_ now, isn't he?"

"Well, ex guy. Don't worry, he didn't tell me anything about you in processing. We might as well be strangers."

"Astute. We are," she crossed her arms, "This is some kinda strategy? Talk to me about Axel so I...give something away or...something?"

"Well, that would only work if you _had_ something to give away, right?"

Larxene smiled dryly, "Right."

"You know that's why Saix and I are here in the first place, right?" Yuffie prompted, "Looking for Axel."

"I gathered. And I already told Saix..."

"That was off the record, and for what it's worth, I honestly don't think you told him anything."

"You could always ask him."

Yuffie rolled her eyes, "He never talks about this place. His childhood, his friends. Nothing. If I had to guess, I'd say something pretty bad went down between you three way back in the day."

"Again. You're so curious, ask him."

"Oh, I _could_. But I know his story and yours will be pretty different."

"What if I told you it didn't matter? Not anymore and not for a _long_ time. That it _definitely_ has jack all to do with anything going on now."

Yuffie shrugged, "Maybe I'd believe you. But until I know for sure what happened...a maybe's still a maybe."

Larxene groaned in frustration, leaning against the wall. She expected Yuffie to just leave, turn on her heel and strut on out the door.

She didn't.

"Who are you protecting?" Yuffie asked as if it were just an innocent fancy.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come on. A girl like you: no higher education, trying to work an honest job...you get caught up in a case like this, that's gonna be hard to walk back from."

"Thank you so much for reminding me."

"You _could_ give a statement, tell us everything you know, get this whole thing over with so it disappears faster...but you don't. And there's only two reasons I can think of for that," she smiled sweetly, "Wanna hear 'em?"

"I'm on the edge of my seat."

"You're covering for yourself, or you're covering for somebody else. Now, we grabbed you coming back home to the scene of the crime which, I'm just gonna say now, would be a _pretty_ bad move for a murderer. So if you didn't _kill_ him, you must be protecting somebody."

"Well, it's not Axel," said Larxene, "If that's what you're getting at."

"No?" Yuffie considered, "Fine, then. So...someone else. Maybe your brother?"

Larxene's heart skipped a beat. Still, she worked to compose herself, not to give anything away. This was harder than lying about Axel. In a way, she'd been lying about Axel for years, it was nothing knew.

But Dem...the memory of him in that cell, rocking back and forth, chanting to himself... It was fresh, perhaps it would always feel fresh, raw, cut into her mind with no chance of ever being fully banished, fully exorcised from it.

"You live with him, don't you?" Yuffie prompted, "Well...I guess technically, he lives with you," she considered, "That band can't pay a lot of bills."

"I'm sure you're trying to get to a point."

"Just that he _was_ the third person in the house, and he's the only one not dead or behind bars, so..."

"My brother has nothing to do with this!" she snapped, "He's not even in town."

Yuffie's expression changed, "Oh? Well, I figured. Just that...we had a visitor last night. Just around the time we got the call about your place. Nice kid, bit scatterbrained, said he and your bro were really tight. And that something happened to them that morning..."

Larxene felt her blood run cold, her grip tighten on the bars.

"...someone attacked them. Knocked him out and took your brother," Yuffie added, with a touch of sympathy, "You _really_ didn't know?"

 _Pretend. Lie. Go on. Act heartbroken, shocked, disgusted, terrified. It can't_ possibly _be hard._

"N-no," she stammered, "No, I...I didn't. You don't know where he..."

"Not yet," said Yuffie earnestly, "But I promise you, we're gonna do everything we can to find him. If there's anything you know, anything that can help us..."

"If there was anything I thought you needed to know, I'd tell you," said Larxene shortly.

Yuffie sighed, "Worst thing is, I believe that. Just...think about it, okay?"

Larxene said nothing. She was sure Yuffie didn't expect her to. She turned and left the cell block, the door swinging shut behind her.

Larxene sighed aggrievedly, running both hands down the length of her face. She'd forgotten about Hayner. Of course he would have gone to the police. Hadn't Axel mentioned that?

 _You know where he is. You could tell them, they could help_.

Help find him...sure. But she'd _seen_ him, she knew what he was like, how broken, dispirited...there was nothing they could do. Vexen, on the other hand, could fix him. So he claimed. For all Larxene knew, he was lying, just to get her to comply, to do his bidding.

Maybe Demyx was already beyond her help.

"Blew off some steam?"

"There's some left over, if you wanna try," she looked over her shoulder at Saix, "Hey, Moonboy."

"Please," he rolled his eyes, "I've about retired that one."

"Guess you don't have a lot of reasons to answer to it."

"What? You still answer to Rex?"

Larxene smirked despite herself, "Depends who's asking."

He looked tired. His hair was in a tangle, dark circles under his eyes. Sighing, she said, "I heard your Dad came by this morning."

"When you say 'heard', do you mean 'through the grapevine', or did you actually overhear all the flagellation?"

"Little of both," she smiled sadly, "I'm sorry you had to go through all that."

"Yeah...well, it was bound to happen eventually. I just thought I might get a word in edgewise this time."

"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't vote to reelect him."

"That's a tiny comfort, thanks," he sighed, "He...um...he accused me of being too sentimental. Putting my feelings about old friends before my job."

"Old friends, huh? That's charitable."

"You think so?" he cocked an eyebrow.

"Well...I guess that's all up to you. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if you never wanted to speak to me again."

"And what would _that_ get done?"

"That's very mature of you. But that's no surprise, you've always been the most grown up of all of us."

"I regret that now, more and more," he sighed, hands on his sides, "Maybe if I'd been more of a kid, things would've happened differently."

"It wasn't on you, Saix," Larxene said softly, "It never was."

"I know you mean well, but being made the victim isn't any more comforting. You know that, right?"

Larxene smirked, "That's the go, now? I'm in a cell for a crime I _clearly_ didn't commit, so I'm the victim..."

"Yuffie's being really nice with you. Our friend Detective Lockhart wants to threaten you with contempt, and yes, I am really screwing myself telling you that."

"Our _friend_ Detective Lockhart _really_ hates bikers. I dunno, in our experience, isn't the _hardcore_ biker prejudice reserved for the crinklier crowd?"

"You haven't met my partner," Saix smiled coolly, "But Yuffie has a point. I know you, you're no victim. If you're sitting in this cell, refusing to say _anything_ , it's got to be because you're protecting somebody."

Larxene sighed, "Saix, I really don't want to have this conversation twice in a row."

"It's _me_ , Larxene. You think I don't know what it's like to clean up after Axel?"

Larxene looked up at him, caught off guard, "You actually believe Axel would do something like this?"

"I don't want to believe it. Believe me, Larxene, I don't. But I know how Axel felt about you."

Larxene chuckled bitterly, feeling a sudden chill on her spine. The feel of Axel on top of her, her running his belt through his jeans, looking up into those bold, green eyes, kissing tears from the red teardrops on his face.

That night seemed almost to have happened in another life. She couldn't reconcile it with this new reality. And it felt unfair to even _attempt_ to make a judgment on what it had been, what had happened between them, especially with all she knew now that she hadn't known that night.

All she had learned, and lost.

"Do you, really?" she asked in a ghost of a voice, "Do _any_ of us really know how Axel feels? About anything?"

He was in the wind now. Larxene had been thinking to herself what might have become of him, where he might have gone, him and this kid...this Skeleton Key Vexen so desperately wanted to have back.

"What about Demyx?" Saix asked, "Larxene, I'm willing to believe you don't know about Axel. That you never want to talk about him again. I get that, and I respect it. I've been struggling with the same feelings for three years. But Demyx...I _know_ how you feel about him, how you've always protected him. Axel hurt you, he hurt us both, but if there was ever anybody I _knew_ you cared about, it was him..."

"Demyx has never done a damn thing wrong in his entire life," Larxene snapped, "You _know_ that. He's a good person, he's almost _stupidly_ good, and his greatest failing is that he doesn't know how _not_ to be good, to be trusting, to give everybody the benefit of the doubt."

"I believe that. Just like I believe what Hayner said, that he's been taken, that he's in trouble. Larxene, I know you would never do anything to put him in danger..."

"He is going to _die_ ," Larxene interrupted him before she had a chance to stop herself, "Demyx...he's going to die."

He looked at her, face fixed, "You think so?"

"I know so," there was no stopping it now, she had to go through with it, she had to say everything, "And even if he doesn't die, he'll be good as dead, Saix. Unless I get out of here. Unless I _help him_."

Saix frowned, "So you know where he is?"

"Dammit, that's not the..." she broke off, taking a breath, "I can't tell you. I drag the cops into this, it's over."

"What kind of trouble are you in, Larxene?"

She looked around, wondering how to say it, if she should, eventually settling on, "It's Marluxia. He...he got involved in something he shouldn't have, and it's Demyx and I that are paying for it."

"Might be Marluxia too, if he's dead."

"Maybe! Maybe that's why he was killed, I don't know, but I do know that the _only_ way I get Demyx back is if I get out of here, if I find..."

"If you find Axel?" Saix prompted.

Larxene paused, but Saix continued, "He _is_ a part of this. Isn't he?"

And she relented, "Yes. Yes, he is. And he has...he has _something_ they want. I don't know if he knows that, but for Demyx's sake, I _have_ to find..."

"Axel!" Yuffie came running into the cell block, "You're not going to believe this..."

Saix's manner changed at once as he turned to look at her, a new air of excitement about him, "What, you found him?"

To his credit, he did nothing to give Larxene away as he asked that, not even turning to look at her.

Yuffie shook her head, "No, but he's been _seen_. Some guys hit a place up north, outside Departure. Some rich guy's winter home, made a bit of a mess."

"Guys? More than one?"

"Two," Yuffie sounded like she'd just run a marathon, moving to stand between Saix and Larxene's cell, "Nothing on the second, but the first is tall, thin, red hair...two pretty distinctive tattoos."

"Oh my God."

"That's what I said. Tifa's already got a team up there. We'd better get..."

Larxene made up her mind. She rocketed forward, reaching through the bars to grab Yuffie by the shoulders, pulling her up against the bars before she could finish speaking. In a fluid motion, she grabbed Yuffie's gun from its holster, reached next for the keyring on her belt, in so doing, yanking Yuffie's head against the bars with a soft clang.

"Which key?" she whispered.

"Get the _hell_..."

"Which key?" she pressed the muzzle of the gun through a slot in the bars, up against the back of Yuffie's neck.

"Third one from the right."

Keeping the gun on Yuffie, Larxene tried the key in the lock. Nothing. Larxene hadn't any time to react before Yuffie wrenched away from her, turned around, reached through the bars. Larxene grabbed her by the collar, pulled her against the bars. Her head hit the metal with a sickening clang, and she slumped forward, eyes fluttering shut.

"Good try," she muttered, trying the key _next_ to the one Yuffie had indicated. The cell door opened. Larxene bent down and dragged the barely conscious Yuffie to her feet, pressing the gun to her head.

"Larxene..." Saix was only a few steps ahead of her, "You don't want to do this."

"No," she shook her head, feeling hot tears prickling at her eyes, "No, Saix, I don't. Honestly, I can't remember the last thing I did that I _wanted_ to do, but this isn't about wanting. They will..."

"They'll kill your brother. I get it."

"You have _no_ idea. No idea. If Axel and...and this kid..."

"Kid?"

"If the police get them, it's over. Don't ask me why, I don't know, all I know is that if I _ever_ want to see Demyx again, I _have_ to get to them before anyone else."

"Think about what you're doing!" he insisted, "You're a murder suspect, you're holding a police detective at gunpoint. Larxene, if you run..."

"I have no choice, Saix!"

"Really? No choice? Just like you had no choice back then? With Axel?"

"Don't you _dare_ throw that in my face!"

"There's _always_ a choice, Larxene. Sometimes an ugly one. But if you run..."

"What? My life is over? It's not about _my life_ , Saix."

"What're you going to do? Run out into the world on a hunch? Hope you catch up to them before anyone else?"

"There's nothing else I _can_ do!"

Saix shook his head, "Put the gun down, Larxene."

"Let me go, and I will," she felt a tear run down her cheek, "Just...just let me go."

It felt like an eternity before Saix nodded. Larxene let out a sigh that was half sob, lowering the gun to the floor and kicking it across the concrete to Saix, who picked it up, turned it over in his hand, and shot out the security camera in the corner without blinking an eye.

Larxene stood there, eyes wide, "What...I don't..."

"You're going after Axel," Saix said nonchalantly as if it were nothing, "I'm going with you."

* * *

 **A/N** : Hope you enjoyed it! Next chapter will be a monster, so I figured it would be a good time to inset a longer gap, just so I can polish off some more things. Therefore,expect Chapter 27 two Fridays from now.

See you then and thanks, as ever, for reading and (hopefully) enjoying Radiant Creatures!


	27. Spill of the Chase

Chapter 27, Spill of the Chase

 **A/N:** And now, after an extended wait, here's the monster that was promised.

This chapter, as you can probably already tell, was a bit of a beast to write. It contains a lot of that thing I'm not so good at...action sequences! If you've made it this far you've already read several of those. Maybe you liked them. If you did, you're in luck. In any case, I did enjoy these sequences, and I like how a lot of it turned out.

I hope you enjoy them too, and that you find them worth the wait.

* * *

"So what you're telling me is, you've got nothing?"

Squall frowned at Seifer, who was lying on his cot, feet up against the bars of his cell, looking downright cozy, all tings considered.

"23 years old, father deceased, mother does freelance R&D..."

"Kinky."

"... _Research and Development_ ," Squall sighed, "No criminal record."

"'Sides the whole killing people for giggles bit?"

"Hades kept him as a contract killer this long, he had to be good at covering his tracks. Don't act surprised."

"So, what you're saying, your super important _police_ secrets are useless, and you got me locked up for nothing?"

Squall sighed, crossing his arms, "It's not like it's been entirely a waste of time..."

"Aw, no, some chick got killed, and it's either our boy or a _giant_ frigging coincidence. Way our luck's turning out it's just some random pervert."

"Something will turn up. More than likely he's heard about Aerith's murder by now. He's probably gonna figure he might come up in connection with it. He's gonna want to put some space between here and him. Ratcliff's got roadblocks up around the town, checkpoints at all highway exits..."

" _Roadblocks?_ " Seifer scoffed, "I've got some Grade-A mouth breathers in my gang and they _still_ know how to get around a roadblock. Cloud won't have any problems, not if he's as good as they all said he was."

"Maybe not, but he'll be slowed down. If he's smart, he'll keep his head for a while, try to disappear without running anywhere."

"Okay, sure, cool..." Seifer nodded, getting to his feet, "But...uh...you're kinda forgetting something."

Squall wasn't impressed, "The Angel?"

"We're thinking he did this, right? Killed the girl to get to Cloud, settle some score?"

"It would fit with what we know already."

"And Cloud probably knows that too. Hell, this guy's _counting_ on him knowing. Ain't no way Cloud leaves without finding him first."

Squall sighed, "You're probably right."

"Oh?" Seifer raised his eyebrows, "Ain't that something?"

"Not that it helps us much, either way."

"Course it doesn't, but if it was some shit _you_ said..."

"If the Angel is trying to lure Cloud out, goad him into a standoff, it's on us to stop it."

"What if one of 'em takes the other out?"

Squall frowned, "What if. What if Cloud is smart, doesn't _let_ himself be lured out, stays low, maybe finds a way around Ratcliff's roadblocks. You just said it: he's not stupid. Then the Angel keeps killing, more and more, just to lure him out into the open. This isn't just some errand we're running, Seifer."

"Right," Seifer said at length, "Sure, yeah, Leon, I know," he stepped away from the bars, slipping his hands into his pockets, "So...got any ideas, or were you just _that_ ready to piss on mine?"

Squall made to answer (it wouldn't have been a very satisfactory one for either of them, really), but was cut off by a booming, slightly hysterical voice from dispatch, "Detective! Detective Leonhart!"

"Bossman needs his diaper changed?" Seifer asked wryly.

Squall looked from the doors back to Squall, exasperated, "It's nothing new. You stay here."

"I've got a _choice_?" Seifer beamed, but Squall had already headed back the way he'd come.

"I'll figure this out, Leon! Don't have any worries on that."

 _No, because you've always been the_ picture _of good judgment calls._

He wasn't sure if he liked Seifer's dogged optimism any more or less than the disgruntled, snarky bitterness that typical characterized his behavior toward him. It felt more like Seifer was making fun of him than anything else.

 _And it's not like he'd be completely wrong to do that._

As much as it hurt Squall to admit it, Seifer had a point. There was almost nothing on Cloud Strife in any of the DPD's records, and nothing at all on this 'Angel', or anyone who matched what little they'd been told about him. Were it not for that girl's murder last night, this entire trip back would've been for nothing.

And even _with_ Aerith's murder, there was an innocent woman dead and they were no closer to finding either flown bird.

"Detective!" Ratcliff drew up to him, face sweaty and eyes bugging out of his head, as they'd been since Squall had returned to the station, "Where in _blazes_ have you..."

"Records room, Commissioner," Squall answered briskly, "Thought I could cross reference what we know from the murder scene, see if there's been anything similar..."

"Hmph!" Ratcliff made a series of huffing and puffing noises, his chest inflating and deflating with an erratic rhythm, "And no luck?"

"No," Squall admitted.

"Well, that's no surprise," a harsh, hoarse voice as a big, leathery woman emerged from the general direction of the ladies' room, a stubby cigarette held between two just-as-stubby fingers, "Any of those records that aren't crawling with _mildew_ might as well be old grocery lists..."

"We reorganized the database _quite_ thoroughly!" protested Ratcliff, "An entirely new system was implemented, for ease of access and..."

"'Evening, Madame District Attorney," Squall greeted the woman.

Hartford looked at him out of the corner of her eye, inclining her head in a spastic little bow, "Heard you were back from the dead, so to speak. Long time, no see, Detective."

"You didn't come all this way to see me?"

Hartford snorted, "Don't get too excited."

"Definitely not," but she didn't seem to notice that little jab, going on.

"Case you haven't notice, Detective, since your many adventures underground, all hell has, quite literally, broken loose."

"I mentioned the suspect he brought in, didn't I?" asked Ratcliff with little enthusiasm, "We're not sure we can even _charge_ him with anything."

"That's the Almasy kid, yes?" asked Hartford, "Centerpiece of your big bust, once upon a time?"

"The very one. Brought him in on suspicion of..." he hesitated, deciding to choose his words carefully, recalling all too well what had happened in his interview with Seifer that morning, "...one of the girls' disappearances. Doesn't look like it pans out."

"And meanwhile, more and more threads come undone..." Ratcliff moaned. Hartford scowled at him, taking a prolonged drag on her cigarette.

"You want to talk about coming undone? Eight disappearances, one major highway accident and a murder ripped from an airport thriller. I'll have you know, I've been juggling the hysterical masses _and_ the harpy press. You know there's a reporter gone missing?"

Squall looked up sharply, eyes narrowing as Ratcliff said weakly, "No."

"Neither did I until two hours ago. Someone filed a missing persons report. Let me tell you something _else_ you boys don't know. I've got the feds breathing down my neck, wanting in on this case."

"Which one?" asked Squall.

Hartford snorted, "I figure all of them. Some kinda jurisdictional dick-wagging contest. I don't pay any mind to that kinda thing, but let me tell _you_ I'm half tempted to let 'em in."

"Octavia, that is entirely unnecessary!" Ratcliff protested breathlessly, "This department is well equipped..."

"This _department_ is a circus. A three-act tragedy, no intermissions. I half expect two midgets to come trotting out in a horse suit. I tell you, Ratcliff, if it were _me_ paying your dues, I'd have you thrown out of this office..."

"Well, it is lucky for us all that the Mayor is possessed of a great deal more sense..."

"It's my career on the line!" she stubbed her cigarette out on a nearby desk, a scorch mark hissing on the otherwise spotless white surface, "District Attorney enforces the laws, keeps the order, maintains the illusion that the system works. It's up to you to help make that _convincing_. I've got four police departments answering to me and, let me tell you now, Ratcliff, if I could, I wouldn't just let the feds take over here, I'd _sell_ them this office to use as a pool joint."

She broke off, breathing heavily. Ratcliff, who had turned a sickly, rotten sort of color proceeded to mumble indistinctly.

Figuring that neither of them were going to say anything of any merit, Squall attempted to get some more out of the D.A before she finally succumbed to cardiac arrest.

"That why you're here, Madame D.A? To warn us about the feds?"

"If I thought warnings would change how this place operates, you'd have been getting S.O.S signals back-to-back nonstop till Morse Code was your second language," she tsked contemptuously, "Wanted to give your boss an update on the situation out west."

"Out west?" Squall turned to Ratcliff, "Saix and Yuffie?"

Ratcliff got all shifty eyed, "I'd been meaning to tell you once normalcy had returned..."

"Before or after we all got raptured?" Hartford scoffed., "I take it you haven't heard about the Most Dangerous Game, then?"

"Is that a code name for something?"

"Hardly. Earlier today, coupla kids broke into a hunting lodge outside Departure. Caused what you'd politely term 'a mess'."

"Burglary?"

"We'd like to think so, but the vic's not talking."

"He's got something to hide, then?"

"Try a lot of somethings, and none of them very well. Departure PD's got their heads somewhere north of their asses, so they found some evidence of less-than-clean hands quick enough, took the owner and his business partner into custody, pending charges."

"Financial crimes?" Squall guessed.

"Shuffling money around, you know how it is with these rich boy pretenders. Inherit some cash and spend the rest of your days bouncing it from place to place, picking up whatever it lands on."

She was looking at Squall with a significance he believed, by now, he understood, "Let me guess. This particular money spent a lot of time sticking underground."

"Almost exclusively," Hartford nodded, "Far as we can tell, they were contractors for the Styx and Stones."

"Hades has a practical army of money men," said Squall, "Probably, they're only job _was_ moving cash around."

"Such an expert on Hades and his ilk, Detective," said Ratcliff mournfully, "I must say, it's a wonder you got out of that place with as little as you did."

Squall clenched his fists, "I didn't exactly have a lot of chances to comb through Hades's bank accounts when I was down there. Don't remember that being my job, anyway."

"No, of course not," said Hartford flatly, "Your job was...what? Find that silver-scalped James Dean and Mr. Football."

"They may have been down there once," said Squall, working with a particular effort to keep his cool, knowing how this looked, knowing again how much of an incompetent moron he seemed, "But by the time I got there..."

"They'd already grabbed a quick train out of town, yes?" she snorted, "That's another thing. Two kids and some mystery man run down the top of a moving train in broad daylight, and nobody's seen them since. I'd say something stinks around here, if I didn't know it took _brains_ to go crooked."

"The matter of that train wasn't even this department!" protested Ratcliff, "That was Twilight's jurisdiction, it falls on Cecil Harvey's head..."

"Keep shifting the blame, why don't you? It's real sexy, gets the heart pumping."

"What about Twilight?" asked Squall, "We sent two detectives out there, are they on the..."

Hartford looked at him out the corner of her eye, "That'll make the next thing."

Ratcliff resumed his favorite sport of clearing his throat dramatically. Squall eyed him, "You know already?"

"I'm the Commissioner of Police, Detective!" he ignored Hartford's sharp barking laugh, "Something occurs to one of my own, I _am_ notified..."

"What happened? Saix, Yuffie...are they hurt, or..."

It surprised him how quickly he was speaking, how erratically. Typically, he tried not even to think about anybody he worked with, that wasn't the job, and fixing too hard on your colleagues was rarely good for anybody involved.

But still he felt it, the raw panic roaring in his veins.

"Cool your head, Detective," said Hartford flatly, "Can't say for sure what they are or aren't, and that's the problem."

Squall stared, "You _lost_ them?"

"They're not my _property_!" protested Ratcliff, "And they were a whole town away, under a different department. You might as well say Cecil Harvey's responsible for balancing the budget around here!"

"What, would he do a better job?" Hartford cocked an eyebrow, "Don't tempt me, Ratcliff. Between you, the FBI, the press and the hot flashes, I'm about ready to raise some hell. Don't think I won't try it."

Ratcliff started stammering again. Squall let out a sigh, "You don't know where they are? Saix and Yuffie, I mean?"

"Cameras in the station were taken out, but it looks like a suspect got hold of them."

"A _suspect_?"

"Hijacked a cop car and everything. An anarchist's wet dream."

"Jesus."

"I said the same thing, but he didn't answer."

"Well, we have to find them," said Squall, "We let some criminal use our guys as shields, what does that say about us?"

"Detective, I assure you, we will do all in our power to find them," said Ratcliff pedantically, "But _you_ must stick to task. We have precious few capable heads about the place as it is..."

"You can say that again," commented Hartford dryly.

"And what am I supposed to do, exactly?" asked Squall, his voice dangerously low, "Dive back into the records, search a murder scene for the tenth time, sit around and wait for someone else to go missing, to die..."

"I don't appreciate your tone, Detective," said Ratcliff.

"I do," said Hartford, "But the point remains. Got to be _one_ person around here who knows what he's doing. You're more use to us here."

Squall gritted his teeth. He'd, of course, believed the same thing under different circumstances, it was the only reason he'd decided to come back here in the first place. But the realization that he'd had his back turned, so focused on his own ultimatum that he'd been neglecting his own job, his duty, the oath he'd sworn, the people he'd promised to protect...

Saix never should have been out of town, he was too raw, untested. Someone like that usually went two ways, off the rails entirely, or so committed to going by the book that they only made everything worse.

Squall knew too well.

But he couldn't protest. Who knows, maybe even _that_ would end up triggering a premature heart attack. He sighed, looking from Ratcliff to Hartford, "Well...keep me posted."

Ratcliff looked honestly surprised. He'd clearly been expecting the fight that Squall wanted to give, but couldn't.

"Don't really have much of a choice, do we?" asked Hartford, "Now, I've got those vultures from DTV news begging for a press statement..."

"You didn't _allow_ them, Octavia?"

"Why should I? Not like we've got anything to hide. We're as much a hot mess on the inside as it looks from the out."

She started across the dispatch, Ratcliff attempting to follow, calling out after her. Squall shook his head. He felt unmoored, listless. There was so much to do, and yet at the same time, so little he could really do about anything.

Not content to just sit back at his desk and continue perusing through archives he knew would get him nowhere, he turned on his heel and returned to the cell block.

 _Your only confidant_ , he thought dryly, _Perfect._ _Somewhere, someone's playing a huge joke on..._

Seifer's cell was open. Not just open, it was _empty_. Squall stared at it, unable to keep his mouth hanging open.

Like a flash, his hand went to his belt, only to find that there was no keyring hanging from it, not anymore.

" _I'll figure this out, Leon!_ " Seifer's voice came ringing back to him, " _Don't have any worries on that_."

"Shit," he breathed, turning on his heel and running out into the dispatch, looking feverishly around the room, heart pounding in his chest.

The door to the men's room was hanging open. With one glare at the security camera mounted in the corner, Squall hurried in, and found himself faced with the open window, looking out to the night outside, and whatever better job Seifer had convinced himself he was capable of doing.

He let out a low groan, leaning against the wall. He wanted to find Seifer, punch him out, spit in his face, call him out for his headstrong, cocky, 'devil may care' bullshit.

And yet there was a part of him, just as sizable, that couldn't blame Seifer. He almost envied him the chance. And that pissed Leon off most of all.

* * *

"Better stop here."

"In the middle of nowhere?"

Saix gave Larxene a look, already limping the TPD patrol car (Saix wasn't sure who it belonged to, but they'd just left their keys on a desk at the station, so they couldn't be surprised) over to the shoulder of the road, "That's _why_ we're stopping here. It's a cop car, Larxene, if it's not being tracked now, it will be in an hour."

"I _know_ that," she said tersely, "But what are we supposed to do about that? Walk?"

"Until we figure out where we're going, yes."

She sighed, slumping down in her chair. Saix cocked an eyebrow at her, "I'm sorry, do you want to say something?"

"Don't do that. I'm not a kid, Saix. Even if I was, I'd smack your teeth out for saying that."

He put the car into park, turning the engine off, "Maybe you shouldn't be criticizing my plan since, from all I've been able to ascertain, you don't even _have_ one."

"I'm terribly sorry I didn't have time to put an entire gameplan together, I was busy being accused of a murder I didn't commit."

She ran her fingers through her hair, looking over her shoulder with narrowed eyes, "What about _her_?"

Saix gritted his teeth, looking through the wire mesh to the back of the car, where Yuffie was all balled up, hands cuffed together and ankles tied with plastic binds, her mouth gagged with a grungy teeshirt purporting to be from the _Bolt Canine Expo_ , whatever the hell that was, they'd found it in the trunk.

She glowered at them through the bars, saying something that Saix was sure would be very shocking to hear on her lips if he could understand a single word of any of it.

"I told you," said Larxene, "we shouldn't have brought her."

"If we left her at the station, she would've radioed for help."

"Everybody and their mother was up at the Wilderness Lodge looking at whatever mess Axel made!"

"They still would've sent someone after us, we would've had less time to get away."

"Yes, less time to find a perfect spot of nowhere to ditch the car."

"I already explained why..." he broke off, taking a deep breath, "Listen, we'll just leave her here. In the car."

"You're not serious?"

"It's a cop car stranded on the side of the road, someone's gonna notice eventually."

"No, I mean...we just _leave_ her?"

Saix raised his eyebrows, "What's the alternative? Better yet, don't answer that."

"That's not what I..." Larxene turned to look at Yuffie, pressing her lips into a thin line, "She'll give us away."

"There's nothing _to_ give away. Unless you actually have any idea where we're going and what we do when we get there?"

Larxene opened her mouth as if to say something, but stopped, sighing, "Whatever you say, _Detective_."

Saix rolled his eyes, "My turn. What about _him_?"

" _Axel_!" the bird seemed to be aware it was being addressed, fluttering its wings from the perch of its cage, precariously positioned between their two seats, " _Axel_!"

"Well, we're not leaving _him_ in the car."

"No, you'd rather lug the cage around the woods on foot..."

"Where were all the protests when I was _getting_ the cage from the evidence locker?"

"You'll have to forgive me, I was too distracted tying my partner up!"

Yuffie made more muffled noises that Saix forced himself to ignore.

"It's a _bird_!"

"It's Demyx's bird, I can't just...leave the stupid thing."

"And it's better off tagging along with us, right?"

" _Axel! Axel! Axel!_ "

"Doesn't it know how to say _anything_ else?"

"Sure," Larxene shrugged, "Allegedly, it can sing too. I guess witnessing a murder really traumatized it."

"Larxene..."

"I am _not_ leaving Dem's bird," she spoke slowly, deliberately, eyes blazing, "We clear?"

"Clear as mud," but Saix decided not to press the point anymore, "Come on, out of the car," he hesitated, "Please."

To his surprise, she obliged him, stepping out of the car, bird cage in both hands. Saix removed the keys from the ignition, turning one last time to Yuffie.

"I...um...I'm sure you really hate me right now," he began, "You took a chance on me, tried to give me some real work..."

More irate than usual incoherent noise.

"I promise, you weren't wrong to believe in me. I'm gonna find Axel. It's just..." he shrugged, "It has to be this way. I don't expect you to understand, I hardly understand it myself, but...I know what I'm doing."

He was right. It _was_ hard to understand, even harder to believe it as he said it.

"And I get that, um, when you get out of here, you're going to have to give me up...to Harvey and Lockhart, Ratcliff, all the rest of them. You just...you do what you have to do. I've got to do the same."

She made some inexplicable expression of confusion, probably demanding to know _why_ he 'had' to do any of this.

Saix had been asking himself some variation of that question for years, and increasingly over the last week.

"Sit tight, Yuffie," he told her, getting out of the car and, making sure he'd at least left both windows open a crack for air, locking it behind him.

"No hard feelings, I hope?" asked Larxene.

"Shut up," Saix bent down, dropping the car keys to the asphalt just under the car. He looked up to find Larxene staring at him.

By way of explanation, he offered, "Someone will find the keys and let her out."

"That's very considerate."

"She's a good person. She was just...doing her job. This has nothing to do with her."

"Funny, I could say the same thing about you."

Saix rolled his eyes, starting down the road, Larxene close at his heels, "You know that's not true."

"Do I? Have you claimed some monopoly on all things Axel, or..."

"Do you want my help, or not?" Saix rounded on her, "Because as un-fun as I'm sure this is for you, you might appreciate it is _much less fun_ for me."

" _Axel!_ " squawked Zazu, " _Axel! Axel!_ "

"Shut _up_!" both he and Larxene commanded the bird at once. It did shut up, but Saix was sure it had nothing to do with anything they'd said to it.

"Look..." Larxene began as they continued up the road together, "I appreciate this. Really. I didn't _ask_ for a...a partner or anything..."

"No, you were just gonna go off on a whim with nothing but a stolen gun and a bird."

Larxene's free hand went nervously to Yuffie's gun in its holster at her side, "I just don't work very well with others. As you surely remember."

"That's not true."

"No?"

"No," Saix shrugged, "You were pretty good at bossing people around."

Larxene shook some loose hair from her eyes, but she was smirking. They continued on in this way for some time. It was a cool, fresh night, a wet mist close to the ground, and the sickly sweet scent of moldering autumn leaves on the air. For a moment Saix could believe he was a kid again, and he'd just stopped his bike at a lonely woodland trail, turned his way to the wind, and took in a nice soft breath.

Just because he could.

"There," said Saix.

"Wha..." Larxene began, but she trailed off in short order as they rounded a tight bend in the road, "Seriously?"

"You, of course, have a better idea."

Larxene looked up at the flashing neon sign above the road, "It's just...I never liked Italian food all that much."

"It's not _Italian_ food, it's barely even food. Not that we can really afford to be picky now, can we?"

They looked from the hideous, tacky sign proclaiming ' _STROMBOLI'S: PIZZA, PASTA, PETRO!_ ' (there was presumably supposed to be an 'l' for petrol, as in gasoline, but Stromboli must have run out of letters) to the three self-service stations, to the tiny convenience store front adjoining the pizzeria.

"So...what, we stock up on provisions for the journey ahead?"

"Partly," said Saix, "At least, that's what I'm doing."

"While I watch the bird, of course?"

Saix gave her a look, "You happen to be a murder suspect. You walk into any public place, you're not gonna have an easy time walking out."

"While you're a very subtle blue-haired cop who _no_ one will ever remember seeing when they're inevitable asked..."

Saix smiled dryly, retrieving a rubber band from his pocket to tie his hair back in its requisite bun, "Just leave this to me, okay?"

"I love pretending to have a choice, it _really_ me feel wanted," she smiled dryly.

"You're telling me," Saix allowed a rare smile, turning on his heel and going on toward the store.

Stromboli's Pizzeria and Roadstand was just as Saix remembered it. A greasy, garlic-scented temple of snack food, auto service materials and weekly periodicals, accented here and there with revolving spits of pork sausage. Strings of salami and other cured meats hung from the ceiling.

Saix should probably have made it a point to ask one of his new friends at TPD if this guy had ever gotten any health citations. Somehow, he doubted it.

He was just wondering why the place seemed so deserted, when a voice bellowed, "I gotta the chips!"

Wincing, Saix turned the collar of his flannel up over his neck, just to be sure, as the familiar accented tones continued, "I no gotta the Totitos."

"Man, they're _Tostinos_. They're, like, nachos?"

"They're _corn chips_ , babe," a tired female voice answering the doofy, confident male one.

"How don't you have them?"

"I have many things! Many things! _Too many things_. Why no chips? I have chips! Same thing!"

"They are _not_ the same thing..."

Saix passed the counter. Stromboli looked the same as ever: a big, bluff middle-aged guy with hair everywhere but on his head. He was even wearing the exact same shirt, with grease stains to prove it.

The customers he were arguing with were a young couple, probably Saix and Larxene's own age. The guy was one of those atypical frat boy incarnations that might as well be hatched from huge clutches of eggs, they were so identical. To his credit, he at least wasn't wearing a ball cap. His female counterpart was a pale brunette who might charitably be termed _unfortunate_ , and not just because of her overbite.

All three of them paused in their grand crusade for about half a second to watch him pass. Saix gave them only a cursory nod, continuing to the far back aisle. The bickering resumed apace.

"How the hell do you not have Tostinos?"

"I been in business long time! I never heard of no Tostinos, you take what I have, or you get..."

"We are _not_ bringing nothing-brand chips to this thing, Hans, I swear to God..."

Saix started combing the back aisle, putting some old skills to use.

" _You_ can't _be serious?_ "

" _Am I ever_?" Axel was on the brink of bursting into peals of hysterical giggles, Saix sometimes felt he was being pranked, " _It's fun, come on._ "

" _It's stealing!_ "

" _No?_ " he'd put on an expression of put-upon surprise, one hand fluttering to his lips, " _Tell ya what else it is, Moonboy, it's_ fun _._ "

" _You're crazy_."

" _I am. You can be too. It's_ wild _._ "

And he had been. It had taken him time to learn, but Saix liked to believe he'd been crazy as Axel at one point, however brief, however it had all ended up.

Even now, he found the old reflexes waking up again, latent senses switching back into gear. He grabbed things from the racks, stuffing them into his pockets. Can opener, mini flashlight, roll of tape, cigarette lighter.

Some things really _were_ like riding a bike.

"These no nothing brand! These good! Good chips!"

"The bag just says chips! It's like admitting they're garbage! Right, Hans?"

"She's right, she has an Associates in, like, Marketing."

"It's a _B.A_ in _Sales_."

" _Testa di cazzi_!" swore Stromboli in ringing tones.

Saix smirked, collecting a bag of chips to add to his inventory. They needed to eat, after all. And Axel had always sworn by the no-name stuff.

Stuffing the bag in the by now bulging pockets of his shirt, Saix was startled by a sudden blare of dramatic horns and fanfare from the tiny T.V set mounted in the upper corner above the desk.

He gave a start, the bag of chips, as well as a few other things, clattering from his pockets to go rolling across the floor.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath, bending down to recollect his possessions, as a voice came on over the T.V.

"Good evening, Radiant County, I'm Mirage Incantata, and _this_ is DTV News."

"What happened to the British chick?" asked Hans.

" _I_ heard she had a breakdown. Makes sense, she's always looking two steps from the edge..."

" _Sta 'zitto!_ " there was a steady beeping tone. Stromboli was raising the volume.

"I'm standing at the Hunting House, the private residence of Departure sportsman Gaston Garnier, where a startling burglary occurred this afternoon."

Saix paused, pockets still only half refilled, peeking his head out around the side of the shelving to glimpse the statuesque platinum blond on the TV.

"Assorted reports name two young men fleeing the lodge, one of whom is wanted by the DPD for accounts of bail jumping and aiding and abetting a suspect's escape from custody."

Saix couldn't help but roll his eyes at the thought. 10 to 1 that mugshot Axel had smiled quite chummily for the day of the car accident was plastered over the screen now. He decided not to pay close attention to it, instead collecting more debris.

"Garnier and a business associate, James Clayton, have been taken into custody. Departure Police are not releasing specific details as yet, except that the men are being held on account of contraband uncovered at the lodge."

"Drugs, probably," remarked Hans, "They say all the juice in town comes from bigshots like those guys. They get it from the St..."

" _Mannagia_!"

"The Departure Police are willing to confirm the involvement of a motorcycle gang in the incident, but would not reveal any details as of yet."

"Them Wind Breakers, probably. Remember, Drizz, I told ya..."

"Wind _Makers_ , my God, Hans, are you retarded, or something?"

Saix found his knuckles going white around the lighter. The Wind Makers. Of _course_ they were involved. Why not? If Axel had any skill, it was the art of getting into trouble.

He hurried to recollect everything, making sure his pockets were suitably refilled. Yes, all there. All but for one thing...

The pill bottle had rolled beneath the ice machine, Saix could just make out the shadowy outline of the tiny plastic cylinder.

Of course _that_ had to be the one to roll just out of reach. Suppressing another swear, Saix went groping around, trying to nudge the bottle back to him, fingertips just managing to brush the smooth surface, the paper label.

"A new development tonight in the murder of a Twilight businessman in his own home Monday..."

Saix froze again, most inconveniently.

"...the victim's girlfriend, 22 year-old Larxene..."

"Chick looks crazy," remarked Hans, "I'd do it."

"You're gross."

"Has escaped custody. Security footage from the TPD has not surfaced, but it is believed she escaped in the company of two Destiny Police Detectives, Yuffie Kisigari and..."

Saix let out a short, shallow breath, wincing. Mirage Incantata's voice faded, ebbed away. He could hear his blood roaring in his ears. He imagined if he closed his eyes, he'd be able to hear sky itself out and above them.

"If you see any of these three individuals, you are advised to call the hotline number on the screen."

"Cute, who loves a narc?" asked Drizz dryly, "We getting those chips or not, Hans? I am _not_ missing ice breakers..."

"Wait, we _are_ getting the chips?"

" _Aspetta_ ," Stromboli, his voice hushed, urgent, "You wait."

Saix began to move, forward on hands and knees. He could glimpse the top of the door over the aisles to his left. It wasn't that far, he could make it, if he were fast enough. Sure. Fast enough. He could. Why not?

Apparently, the 400 pound animated rice ball was faster. Who'd have guessed?

Saix could feel him towering above him, behind him, could hear ragged, heavy breathing, almost _feel_ a sudden charge of excited, nervous energy. He had been recognized. Of course he had.

 _So much for subtlety._

Without thinking twice, he grabbed for his sidearm, whirled around, holding Stromboli at gunpoint, "Safe distance, pal."

"Oh my God!" Drizz cried from the front, "He's got a gun!"

"Very observant," Saix nodded at Stromboli, "Other side of the room. Come on, move, I'm in a hurry."

The proprietor of this less than fine establishment took several steps back at once, his hands thrown over his head.

 _Hostage situations...you know this shit, right? You're a cop_.

Yeah. He knew. How to diffuse them.

"Look, just...everybody stay calm," he looked at Stromboli, " _Per piacere?_ "

"I speak English, _cazzo_."

"Then you heard what I said. Move. Against the wall," he turned sharply to look at Hans and Drizz, "You too."

"Look, man," said Hans haltingly, "We don't want any trouble..."

"Shut up, Hans!" Drizz snapped.

"Yeah, shut up, Hans," Saix nodded, "Come on, up into the corner."

Hans looked from Drizz, to the barrel of Saix's gun and, then, to the mounted payphone behind the check out counter.

Clearly, he wasn't exactly plotting out his moves either. He pushed Drizz to the side with a cry, vaulted toward the phone.

Saix fired a shot into the phone, knocking the receiver off the hook, sending up a flare of sparks. Hans' cry turned into a whelp and he fell against a dingy jukebox, somehow managing to kick it into gear, so that a tinny orchestra started playing throughout the store, accompanied by a some Italian guy moaning in the mother tongue.

" _Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole/N'aria serena doppo na tempesta!_ "

Two hands reached for Saix from behind; Stromboli, no doubt feeling brave, "Give me the gun! You give me the gun!"

They grappled with the gun for some time, something which Saix could have told him was a horrible idea, something which was readily proven by the random discharge of a second shot, this one flying uselessly into a bag of cheesepuffs, which proceeded to spill out, pellmell across the floor.

" _Pe' ll'aria fresca pare gia' na festa.../Che bella cosa na jurnata 'e sole."_

Drizz started screaming, standing in place and doing not much of anything. Saix elbowed Stromboli in the mouth, wresting the gun from his hand.

"That's enough!" he cried, "I'm not saying it again!"

Stromboli stared at him, eyes wide, mouth agape.

"Do I _look_ like I'm _fucking_ enjoying this?" Saix demanded, looking at each of his three hostages in turn, "Surprise: I'm not. I'm _really_ not. Now, I don't wanna _hurt_ any of you gross, deficient, _troglodytes_ , but I've been having a pretty shitty week, so who knows what I'll do?"

" _Ma n'atu sole/Cchiu' bello, oi ne'./'O sole mio/Sta 'nfronte a te!/'O sole, 'o sole mio"_

"I don't want to do...any of this," Saix found his voice was shaking, erratic; his eyes were burning, "But some things...some things in life you just _do_ them. Because you have to. Surely you...good, honest people, get that, right?"

There was a long silence. At last, Hans nodded, "S-sure, man. Yeah, sure. We get it."

"I've been having a hard week too!" offered Drizz, "My mom's cancer came back, and my sister's probably gay."

"Oh, she's _totally_ gay..."

"Who you think you are?" demanded Stromboli, "You break into my business, you raise hell, now you act like you some big..."

Saix rounded on him, "There is _so_ much mold in this building, I'm surprised we're not all sprouting fungus! Do you _want_ to talk about this business?" he let out a breath, "But I...I really don't give a shit. I can't. Someone...someone's waiting for me. You know how it is."

Another prolonged silence, before Drizz nodded slowly.

"Okay, so...I'm gonna need some of that bottled water," Saix began, "Those deodorant sticks. Two. Hell, some toilet paper too," he was gaining steam, watching Drizz and Hans go scrambling to fill a tiny plastic grocery cart.

"You crazy..." began Stromboli.

"Do you _want_ to see crazy?" Saix demanded, adding hastily, "And more of those chips. Like, five bags."

"Dude, where are you going?"

" _Did I say you could ask?_ " Saix seized the newly filled basket from Hans, looking at the three of them in a cursory manner, "Now, you're all gonna sit here, nice and comfy, for _ten minutes_. And then you can go about your business."

"Why ten min..."

Saix cocked the gun. She shut up.

" _Arriverdeci_ ," he said by way of farewell, backing up toward the door, grocery basket hanging loosely from his arm, Italian tenors still echoing in his ears.

No sooner was he out in the parking lot did he break into a run, whirling on his heel, his heart seeming to rocket back to life in his chest.

"Larxene!" he called in a strained voice, "Larxene!"

He looked one way, then the other, "Dammit..."

A screech of tires on asphalt as a dinged up black sports' car whirled out from behind of the fill-up pumps, nearly knocking him off his feet.

The driver's side window rolled down silently and smoothly, "Could you try _not_ screaming the wanted criminal's name in a public place?"

"Where did you get a _Mustang_?"

"Where did you get fifty bucks of groceries?" Larxene smirked keenly, "We hung out with the same hooligans."

"You _hotwired_ it?"

"Easier than stealing a radio," she shrugged, "Please don't tell me you shot anyone?"

Saix's first impulse was offense, irritation. But this passed, "C'mon. You should know I didn't even _have_ to."

And he smiled, a fresh, beautiful wave of _something_ overtaking him. Not happiness, but an adrenaline, excitement, relief... _courage_.

" _Stronzo!_ I kill you! I kill you dead!"

"Shit," Saix turned at the thunderous approach of the delictassen manager, "I told him to wait ten minutes!"

"You expected him to _listen_?" she rolled her eyes, "Come on, in the car, let's go!"

Saix vaulted into the passenger side, his ill-gotten goods jostling around in his lap. He'd barely closed the door behind him when Larxene floored the accelerator, zipping off past the already breathless Stromboli and out toward the open road.

"Oh my God..." Saix panted, leaning back in his seat, "Oh my God."

"Oh my God," Larxene agreed, smiling faintly.

Saix began to laugh, closing his eyes, feeling the cold sweat on his hot brow, the tangled hair escaping the knot he'd tied it in. He laughed and laughed and laughed and, before long, Larxene started to laugh with him, no sense, no sensibility, no reason. Perhaps that was the point.

" _Axel_!" crowed Zazu from the backseat, as if to remind them he was there, " _Axel_!"

"Yeah, yeah," Saix reassured it, "We're on the way."

* * *

Axel wished he could be angry about the sorry state of every other road sign on the county roadways, but considering he and the gang were most of the reason for all the graffiti, dilapidation, and sex organs doodled over the vowels, it would be hypocritical.

And hypocrisy was a bad thing, kind of, at least as long as he was traveling with an impressionable young mind desperately in need of guidance.

"What d'ya think the green ones taste like?" Roxas asked absentmindedly, lifting a corresponding gummy worm from the bag he'd found somewhere in the heap of assorted Cardinal Points junk.

"Green, probably," Axel replied flatly.

This seemed like enough to sell Roxas, who popped the worm into his mouth, his expression immediately twisting into a grimace of distaste.

"Sour?"

"You _knew_?"

Axel shrugged, "Most green stuff's sour. Not lettuce, that's just lame," he frowned, a new thought coming to him, "So...you remember how to skateboard, but you forgot what food tastes like?"

Roxas shrugged, "I dunno. It's just...it's all so _good_!" he beamed, "And it feels good too."

"That's the sugar rush."

"How do they _do_ it, do you know?"

Axel sighed, unable to keep a smile from spreading over his face, "I don't think either of us _want_ to know."

"Oh?"

"Nothing spoils like the truth, Rox," he hesitated, "Though, I guess you could always read the side of the bag, if you can pronounce half the..."

"So where are we going?" Roxas asked suddenly, moving to sit on one of the beanbag chairs.

"Huh?"

"I mean...whoa, sorry, I probably shouldn't have asked..."

"You _probably_ shouldn't have stuffed yourself with solid diabetes, kid," but he was smirking, "We're a few miles off from the county limits."

"...oh," Roxas nodded slowly, "Then what?"

"Well...then we figure out where to go next."

"And...what about the...um...the thing?"

"Which thing?" but Axel already knew. With a sigh, he turned to the thin manila envelope, as yet unopened, sitting on the dash, "Oh."

"Just that...well, we went to a lot to _find_ it, so..."

"So why don't we just see what the thing says?" Axel frowned, "Sure. We will. Once we get where we're going."

"And...um...where are we going?"

From what he could see of his own face reflected back at him in the windshield, Axel wasn't doing a very good job acting like he had a handle on all this.

"Away. Like, seriously, man, we're gonna wanna put some space between us and our buddies back at Hunty House."

"Hunting House?"

"I know, I know..."

"Figure of speech?" guessed Roxas.

"Almost," Axel let out a sigh, "It's just...I think we've gotta put our own behinds safely away from the fire first, right?"

"By going away?"

"Not _away_ , away."

"But you said..."

"We're not leaving anybody behind!" Axel looked at Roxas in the rearview mirror, observing the quiet determination with which he was licking sour dust from his fingers, "I just...I think we need a plan."

"We had a plan, it worked really well."

"For _getting_ the envelope, Rox, it's not the..."

"But how are we gonna know _how_ to make a plan if we don't open the envelope and see what's inside?"

Axel sighed, "That's not a...that's really..." he slackened his grip on the steering wheel just slightly, "Good point."

"So, we're opening it?" Roxas brightened up at once.

"Your lips to God's ear."

"My _what_?"

"Don't ask me, I don't know," he slid the van into park at the side of the road, "Pit stop. Time to do some homework."

"More like...van work," Roxas grinned, "Right?"

"God bless you, kid," Axel said quickly, dragging a beanbag over to sit opposite Roxas as he held the envelope in his lap, "Okay, so...let's see what we've got here, shall we?"

"Right," Roxas nodded.

They sat this way for a little while longer, both of them staring at the envelope. Axel realized his hand was shaking against the paper.

 _Come on. You did more than enough to get your hands on the damn thing, what's stopping you now?_

Good question. There was more than one answer, regrettably.

"So, this guy...your friend?"

"Demyx? What about him?"

Roxas shrugged, "He's...he's where I was, right? Where...you found me?"

Axel nodded, "So I've been told."

"And this girl..."

"Same thing."

"Oh," Roxas nodded, and was quiet for a while before saying, "I never knew...I mean, I...I didn't think there were..."

"Man, why would you? Far as you're concerned, the world began two days ago."

Roxas smiled, "Feels that way sometimes. Except...except not really, I guess."

"Well, that's because the world _didn't_ begin two days ago, Rox."

"No, I mean...some things I _do_ know. So...it's like remembering stuff. Like, like when I got on that board. I _knew_ that board. I don't know from where, but..." he broke off, "I'm not making any sense. I'm sorry. I...I shouldn't have said..."

"You wouldn't like it if _I_ were the only guy talking, Rox, believe me. And I get it. You're thinking, what's in this envelope and...what if, somewhere, there's one for you too?"

Roxas bowed his head, "I...I know that's not the point..."

"Who says? Besides you, I mean," he added the last point, if only to keep Roxas on task here, "If you, Dem and Belle the Beauty over here," he gave the envelope a short shake, "Are all in the same boat, why _isn't_ it the point?"

Roxas smiled softly, but looked uncertain still. Axel sighed, "If...if you don't want to hear it...I get it. Hey, um, if you want, I can go through it first, take a bit of the sting off. If there is a sting..."

"No," said Roxas decisively, "No, you...you don't have to do that. I can take it. Whatever it is."

"You sure?"

"No," Roxas shrugged, "But I'm not really sure of _anything_ , so that doesn't make much difference, does it?"

"No, I guess not," Axel held the envelope, "Okay."

"Okay."

"We ready?"

"We're ready."

Axel took the lip of the envelope, "You totally sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"Just checking," he took the lip between two fingers, paused again, "Rox, are you...are you _really_ cool with this?"

"I am, Axel. Really," he frowned, "Aren't you?"

Axel wasn't sure why he was surprised he'd asked, to be honest. He started falling over himself at once, feeling his face flush, as he struggled to think of a dignified and sensible answer.

"Well, actually Roxas, it's kind of..."

"Huh?"

"Well, I mean, what I'm trying to say is, and this really isn't any of my..."

"There it is again."

"Where's what again?"

Roxas had gotten very tense, "That...that sound. From before, remember, on the..."

"Aw, shit," Axel muttered, hearing what Roxas heard, realizing what he meant, "Not again."

He set the envelope down, not without a tiny, pitiful twinge of relief that they could put _that_ particular can of worms to the side for now. Darting past Roxas, he moved to the end of the van, looked out the rearmost window at the road behind them.

Nothing at first, just the broad, fathomless darkness of the lonely road at night. That and the sound, the inexorable, terrifying and beautiful rumbling of so many engines in chorus.

And then, the first light, the first tiny glint of a headlamp looming out of the moon smoke, coming over the ridge of the hill. And where there was one, then were three, six, twelve...

"She brought a fucking army!" Axel brought his hand roughly against the glass.

"What do we do?" asked Roxas shortly, "I mean, I've still got the skateboard..."

"Good thought, not enough horsepower," Axel started back up the bus toward the front, "We're gonna have to outrun 'em."

"In _this_ thing?"

"Hayner thinks pretty highly of it," Axel turned the engine back on, noticing Roxas's skeptical face, "Yeah, sure, he's Hayner, but I've driven some _real_ lemons in my day. This isn't that..."

A minor explosion noise that must have been the exhaust pipe resisting the call of the living. Roxas jumped and Axel bit back a curse, but the engine came to life all the same.

"This is gonna get a little hairy," Axel warned him, "Better hold onto something."

Roxas responded by grabbing onto the steering wheel. Axel gave him a look and he blushed, instead just grabbing onto the back of the driver's seat.

Sure. Why not? Axel really had no time for scruples, gunning the engine and tearing off down the road. Roxas staggered on his feet, falling forward slightly, head whipping back and front ahead over his shoulders.

"What do they want from us?" he asked breathlessly.

"Given they're working for the guys we robbed and humiliated, I don't think anything good. You can say a lot about the Wind Makers, but when they make a deal, they honor it."

Roxas gritted his teeth, not taking his eye from the encroaching specter of the bikes gaining on the pavement behind them.

"You know them, right?"

"We've crossed paths," said Axel bitterly, "Not the time for war stories, though."

The hum of their pursuers was alive in the night air, the glare of their headlamps shining through the van's windows.

"They're gaining on us!"

"I can tell that!" said Axel, thinking fast, "Hey, don't know if I told you this before, but I've got a pretty spiffy record. Not even a speed ticket. 'Cept one time."

" _What?_ "

"Hold on!" and he swerved the van sharply to the right, cutting off a pair of Wind Maker bikes trying to come along on that side. He heard a scrape of metal, a pair of indistinct screams.

"Yes!" Axel whooped, looking over at Roxas, who was staring, gobsmacked, "What? I've got tricks too."

"You just..."

"Know how many times _I've_ been knocked off the road? They'll be fine. Mostly. I never even wore a helmet, most of the time."

"Axel..."

"I see 'em!" He repeated the trick with two more bikes coming along on the left. Roxas went tumbling to the floor, landing amongst beanbags, old clothes, and assorted Cardinal Points junk. Axel thought briefly of the envelope somewhere amongst all that junk, but mercifully didn't have to think about it for long before another bike came up on the right, forcing him to do the same trick.

There was a heavy thud on the side of the van. The tassels and scarves hanging from the ceiling shook on their moorings, one or two Navajo rugs falling to the floor completely.

"Okay, so maybe the suspension's not as good as Hayner led me to believe..." Axel felt the driver's seat wobble beneath him, "Anymore," he looked at Roxas, "Any more bright ideas, man?"

God help them all, Roxas didn't need a second before nodding, "Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Keep driving."

"That's it, huh?" Axel began, but before he could question any further, Roxas had dashed back to the van and, in one fluid motion, threw open the back doors.

" _Jesus Christ, what the fuck_?" Axel blurted as a harsh, cold gust of wind came tugging into the van. Roxas let out a short cry, grabbed onto one of the doors to steady himself, and turned back to Axel, a manic gleam in his eye.

"It opens!"

"Yeah, it opens, _close it_!"

There were three bikes in perfect formation gaining on them. Somehow they seemed even closer with the doors open like they were. Roxas, evidently, wasn't about to let this deter him, reaching out with his free hand, grabbing for one of the beanbags and, with a glorious abandon, throwing it into the road.

The bag went flying, spilling into two of the bikes. There was a screech of tires on asphalt, one or two cries, a crash of metal, ripping fabric, tiny plastic pebbles being scattered everywhere. No time to see it all, they drove on.

"It worked!" Roxas whirled around, still holding onto the door, grinning from ear to ear, "It actually worked!"

"You bet it did!" Axel whooped, raising his voice to the highest pitch he could manage, " _Eat Rox, assholes_!"

Roxas reddened, "Seriously?"

"Eh, we probably fucked them up too hard for them to hear us anyway," Axel shrugged, "Listen, you want to do something, anything, like, ever...that's it, I'm letting you do it. You remind me."

"Thanks," Roxas said, looking honestly flustered, "I mean..."

"We need music." Axel told him.

"We need what?"

"Listen, Rox, we just _kicked_ these guys' asses in a _bandvan_ ," he raised his eyebrows, "I know you're still new, but that has a certain cultural weight. Calls for celebration."

And, without further ado, he switched on the radio. Hayner, or one of the others, had left a tape in it, so music came blasting into the van immediately.

" _Once I believed that when love came to me/It would come with rockets, bells and poetry..._ "

"Hey, we've got her bag," Axel commented, nodding in the general direction of the Mama Cass canvas bag that Hayner had picked up from God knows where.

Roxas let out another short, breathless laugh, pulling the door shut, shaking windswept hair from his face, "That...that was..."

"Sick. You're sick, Roxas. Don't let nobody tell you different."

"Thanks. I think."

" _But with me and you/It just started quietly and grew/And believe it or not..._ "

Axel chimed in, singing with only a vague approximation of tune, " _There's something groovy and good about whatever we got_ ," he winked at Roxas, "Okay, now together, you get me?"

"Axel..."

" _It's getting better/Growing stronger..._ "

"Axel!" Roxas cried out, eyes wide, staring straight ahead.

"What is..." Axel turned to look out the windshield, his remaining words petering out in a perhaps none-too-dignified yelp at the sight of the veritable motorbike blockade in the road ahead.

 _Must've snuck up around the sides while you were making an ass of yourselves over the kid's trick_.

Figures he'd find some way to turn this thing on its head. But no time to beat himself up about it now. Axel wrenched the wheel sharply to the right, hoping to do a hairpin turn, negotiate a way around them, anything...

Alas, as he'd observed approximately two minutes ago...the van's suspension needed several upgrades.

The whole van listed dramatically to the side, bean bags, record sleeves, bags of convenience store candy all being thrown one way and then the other. The back doors flew open again, Roxas let out a scream, and the van came to the shuddering stop, lying on its side, a tree branch sticking through the windshield, a happy two inches above Axel's splayed face.

" _And it's getting better_ ," Mama Cass kept on singing and swinging, despite everything, what a sport, " _Growing stronger. Warm and wilder...it gets better everyday! Better every day..._ "

"Mother fuck," Axel managed to pant out, leaning his head back against the seat, and, quite promptly, passing out.

* * *

Selphie had to admit, her respect for Zack grew by the day. Besides the whole 'dealing with my possible psychopath brother coming back and killing his girlfriend in my apartment' thing like a real champ, it took some dedication to spend _this_ many hours after school every day surrounded by deep fryer oil and chicken grease and still managing to smell only as bad as any average boy.

"The trick is," he was explaining, levering a spatula under a layer of brown crust at least as thick as the brim of his uniform hat, "You've gotta catch it at _just_ the right angle, and then it peels right off."

"Peels, huh?" Selphie took a half second peek over the counter and averted her eyes at once, "Color me impressed."

"You learn little tricks, doing this stuff long enough. You've got to."

"And you do this... _every_ day?" she asked him, "Right after school?"

"Yep," he nodded, "Well, some Tuesdays, I have off. Some kinda labor laws stuff. But every other day...well, not weekends, but most days. I don't..." he let out a mighty roar, the curtain of crust, indeed, peeling off the stovetop with a deceptive effortlessness, "mind," he finished, panting.

"I can tell that," said Selphie, "That's good. I wish _I_ had a job."

"You could always get one."

She felt her smile get a little fixed on that one. Zack cleared his throat, "I mean, you know, I can always talk to Morty..."

"Wait, there actually _is_ a Morty?"

"Well, not really. We just _call_ him Morty, he thinks it's funny. And they say one guy _didn't_ call him Morty once, and he was out of a job before dinner rush," he stopped, clearing his throat, "But I can totally get you a..."

"Oh, that won't be necessary," Selphie said quickly, "Thanks, though."

"Oh, yeah," he nodded, "Flipping burgers isn't your league, huh?"

"Well, I mean...no!" Selphie protested, "I mean, I'm not some high maintenance...well, not _that_ kinda..."

"That's not what I meant," he sighed, "Sorry. Just...you could do better," he smiled, then looked away almost at once.

"Thanks," Selphie shrugged, "I mean...I'm sure you could too."

"Really?"

"Not that I'm trying to...to make it sound like this job is...is a _bad_ job, because...because it's not fancy or...or clean or nice-smelling or any of that. I think it's good you _have_ a job. And that, you know...you do it."

"It's just...something I've gotta do," he took off the flimsy latex gloves one at a time, handling them gingerly between his fingers as he discarded them in a gaping waste bin, "I don't feel any type of way about it. I mean...I know how it looks, I'm not _that_ stupid."

Selphie had a sudden recollection of Tidus digging a very Tidusy grave in the parking lot of this very establishment not too long ago.

"And...how does it look?" she asked innocently.

"Selphie, I'm a high school kid flipping burgers. The sob story kinda writes itself."

"I'm not sobbing," she shrugged, "And what's wrong with work anyway? You know, in some countries they _make_ you work before you turn 18."

"Like slavery?"

"Not the point," Selphie reddened, "Just...there's nothing to be ashamed of. Heck, you go to school, go to practice, help the cranky old neighbor lady with her chores, and you _still_ come here to work. That's...that's admirable. More than a lot of people do."

"It _is_ a lot," Zack admitted, "But it doesn't always feel like it, you know? Like...like there's something else I could be doing. Something more," he sighed, "Actually...that's why I asked you to come here."

"You _didn't_ want to show me the secret to Morty's Caesar Salad?"

"They'd actually kill me," he sighed, smiling, "I...I had this idea. And I...I wanted to run it by you. See what you think of it."

"You want _my_ opinion?"

"Well...yeah," he said earnestly, as if it were only the most natural thing in the world.

Selphie straightened up, suddenly feeling very important. She couldn't remember the last time someone had _asked_ what she thought about something without attaching some kind of punchline to it. Not that this ever stopped Selphie from sharing what she thought, but still, this was an unprecedented occasion.

So, trying not to sound _too_ puffed up, she said, "Well...fire away."

"So...remember in homeroom?"

"Thatch's mystery message? Zack, I _wish_ I snatched the stupid thing, but, honest to Hebe, I didn't..."

"Hebe?"

"New Age stuff, my Mom talks about her sometimes."

"Well, that's...that's not what I meant anyway," he took a deep breath, "When I said I...I need to do something. About Cloud."

"Oh," Selphie was aware of her voice attaining a somewhat higher pitch, "That. Yeah, I remember."

"Well, I was thinking...if Cloud ran off which, well, it looks like he did..."

"Leaving you holding the bag," Selphie hesitated, "Well, holding _your_ bag. But with his stuff in it. And Sora's. I mean..."

"He's probably gonna wanna get as far from here as he can, right?"

"I mean, _I've_ never killed anybody, Zack, but if I had, I'd probably do the same thing."

"But he can't go _too_ far. Not without help."

"Help?"

"You can't leave the country without a passport. I mean, not easily. And you'd need an I.D if you were driving, in case you got stopped."

"If we're assuming criminals respect legalese."

"They would if they wanted to be careful. If they didn't want to be caught. And Cloud _is_ careful."

"Not the word _I'd_ use..."

"Well, yeah, careful people don't...don't kill people," he paused, "I...I'm not defending him. Honest, Selphie. But...but he _is_ careful. In, like, some ways. It's one of the reasons I have so much trouble imagining him _doing_ something like this."

Selphie nodded, "I get it, Zack. Really. And I wasn't playing dumb, I know what kind of 'careful' you mean. If he did what he did, and he if he was trying to get away from it, he'd play it safe."

Zack seemed relieved she understood, "And he'd need help. He couldn't do it alone."

"You have someone in mind."

"Maybe. I mean...it's a long shot, but...but there _is_ someone. A friend from when they were kids. They grew up together."

"He had _friends_?"

"Not a lot," Zack smiled sheepishly, "He didn't open up to people easily. But...with her..."

" _Her_?" Selphie cocked an eyebrow.

Zack frowned, "Guys _can_ have girl friends, Selphie," he paused, "Right?"

She felt very stupid very fast, "Oh. Oh yeah, of course. Obviously," wanting to move the subject as fast as possible she added, "So, who's this friend?"

"Tifa," Zack said simply, "Tifa Lockhart. I don't remember her too well...but she was cool. Nice. She'd, like, ruffle my hair and call me Breezy."

" _Did_ she?"

"Don't laugh,"

"I'm not," laughed Selphie, "But...um...why Breezy?"

Zack was about as red as the Morty's uniform, "Well...like, Cloud was always _cloudy_ , like, you know he didn't talk much and he _never_ smiled, but...but I guess...I guess I wasn't like that? Or maybe she thought Cloud was less cloudy when I was around, so I was like a breeze, because a breeze pushes clouds away..."

"Uh-huh," Selphie didn't really get it, but she figured that wasn't the point anyway, "So what happened to her, where is she now?"

"Moved to Twilight after high school. She's...um...she's a cop."

"I see," said Selphie flatly.

"I...I know it sounds a bit out there..."

"That Cloud would kill one girl and skip over the thin blue line to the _other_ girl? I mean, I know we were taking about being _careful_ , and that doesn't sound too careful to me."

Zack sighed, "I know. But Tifa and Cloud, they were, like...best friends."

"And best friends put their all out for each other," Selphie finished, "No matter what 'all' is."

"Even if she wouldn't help him, I don't think she'd give him up," said Zack, "I mean...what do I know, right? I can barely figure out my own stuff..."

"No," Selphie nodded, "I think you've got it. If you care about someone that much...it hurts to screw them over. Even if it's the right thing to do. She may have told him to get lost, but she wouldn't have sold him up the river."

"And she'd know where he went," said Zack, "Or she'd know _something_."

"So why not ask her?"

Zack nodded, "Exactly. So...you think it's good? Like, you think it could work?"

Selphie considered. Zack was looking at her as if her judgment could make or break this whole thing. She _wished_ she had that kind of clout.

"I think it's worth a try," she said at last, "Let's do it."

Zack sighed in relief, "Great! Yeah, I...I wasn't so sure, but..." he blinked, "Wait, _let's_?"

Selphie hesitated, "Well...that's why you asked me, right? Like, to see if I would..."

"No. I mean...not like I wouldn't _want_ you to go along, but...but you don't _have_ to. I mean, like Tidus said, it's not any of your..."

"Wanna know a secret about Tidus?"

"Not really."

She told him anyway, "He gets _really_ defensive when he knows he's wrong. Or haven't you wondered why he's wanted to punch your lights out every day since your brother showed up?"

"He's...he's wanted to do that _every_ day?"

"You'll have to ask him. The _point_ is he knows that Cloud's _our_ problem, not just yours. And he's the kinda guy that _loves_ other peoples' problems, long as they don't turn into his."

"He's team captain," Zack protested.

"And the team is _his_ problem. It does great, _he_ does great. It does bad and he tries to drown himself in the shower."

"Wait, seriously?"

"That's a rumor," she said rapidly, "Don't tell him I told you that," she cleared her throat, "Tidus doesn't like responsibility, _especially_ if it isn't 'his'. The slightest chance to pin it on somebody else, he'll take it. You wanna know the number of times he tried throwing Sora under the bus when we were kids? God, sometimes I wonder why Sora didn't knock _his_ lights out."

"Huh," Zack broke off, "So you're saying we should ask Tidus too?"

"Oh. Well, no, I...I wasn't even _thinking_ that," she crossed her arms, "But, now that you mention it..."

"Not that I don't mind if it's just you and me. Or, you know, if you don't wanna go. It's...it's a school night, and it's all the way in another town, and..."

"You ain't talking me out of this, String the Second. You wanted my help, you're getting it. And, truth be told, I think Tidus feels the _same_ way."

"Really?"

"Oh, _definitely_. He'll just never _say_ that," she grinned, feeling an uncommon anticipation well up within her, "So, we going now or later?"

"Er...just gotta prep for the graveyard shift," Zack was already taking off his sassy little visor, "Meet me out front in five?"

"In five. Got it."

"I mean minutes."

" _Gotten it_ ," she winked, already starting out the doors.

Selphie had been standing in the parking lot for approximately 1.5 of those minutes before the second thoughts started to attack.

 _Who do you think you're fooling?_ Really? _Midnight cross-county road trip. Please. You'll be lucky if you even_ find _the lady, and that's probably outcome number Best._

Zack hadn't even wanted her to come along. Maybe she should've respected that. Maybe this _was_ none of her business, maybe she was too focused on insinuating herself into his life, dragging the three of them: herself, Zack and Tidus together. She knew what she was doing, what, maybe, she'd been doing since she and Tidus fell into that fountain at the Dalman Club.

"Sure," she muttered, "make it about _you_ , always about _you_. Everything, good or bad, you're Patient Zero. God. Next thing you know, it'll be your fault the Singing Waitress got axed in the first place."

 _Oh shit_.

She _had_ spoken to Aerith last night. She _had_. Outside the hospital, grilling her about Cloud. Maybe she'd been thinking about him, gone to ask Zack, found his gym bag...found the scarf inside it. Gone to the apartment to investigate...

"Oh God," she breathed, "it _is_ my fault."

"What's your fault?"

Selphie screamed, jumping about a foot in the air.

Zack frowned, "You okay?" he adjusted his backpack on his shoulders, "I mean, if you don't wanna go, Selphie..."

"No," she shook her head, hastily turning that into a nod, "I mean...yeah. Yeah, let's...let's do it. I was just...you know. Talking to myself."

"Oh," he nodded, "How did that go?"

"Fine. Just...good to sort things out sometimes," she smiled, hoping that would be enough.

Looks like it was. Lord love him. Zack smoothed down his jeans, unbuttoned his letter jacket and started across the lot, "Okay. Let's go."

"Let's."

"You know where Tidus lives?"

"I've known him since we were babies," she laughed, "I've got a...kinda idea."

"Good."

They continued away from Morty's side by side, feeling the brisk night wind on their faces.

"Heh," she pointed out, "Breezy."

"What?" Zack realized, "Oh. Right," he blushed, "Very funny."

"I try."

"So...how did it go today?" he asked next.

"How did what go?"

"You said you were gonna go to the hospital. See Kairi, or...whoever it is."

"Oh," Selphie had nearly forgotten somehow, "You mean _Namine_."

"So it _is_ her? Kairi's Mom."

"Kairi's _Grandma_ would like to be so. I think she's betting all she's got on it. Mind you, this was right _after_ she told me Namine was capital D 'dead'."

"Must be rough," said Zack softly, "Losing your kid."

"Yeah. I guess it must be. But, like, at a certain point you've just got to accept it, don't you?"

"That's kinda harsh, Selphie."

"And letting an old lady believe her dead daughter came back from the dead, conveniently ready to do high school over again _isn't_?" she shrugged, "I don't think it's fair. For her _or_...whoever that is. Because even if she isn't Kairi, she _sure_ as hell isn't Namine."

It was a while before Zack spoke up again. When he did, it was hesitantly, "When...when Cloud ran away, my Mom didn't want to believe it. Not at first. She kept saying he'd come back. It couldn't be long. She'd...do his laundry, clean his room. Sometimes, she'd make too much for dinner, realize she was expecting him to be there. Then she'd just get all quiet."

"What about your Dad?"

Zack looked away, "My Dad's dead, Selphie. Died about a year before Cloud left."

"Oh," Selphie slowed down, "I...I didn't know. I'm sorry, Zack, I didn't need to..."

"Don't worry about it," he shrugged, "How could you have known, anyway? Cloud's Dad's dead too, for the record."

"Cloud's..."

"We're half-brothers. Cloud's Dad died when he was a baby. Mom didn't get married for a while later."

"I never knew," she said, "Zack, I...I'm sorry, if I was...insensitive or...or if it got to you, me talking about Kairi and Namine like that..."

"No. It didn't...get to me. Least, I don't think it did. But...but I get how Kairi's Grandma feels. You want to hope someone you care about's okay, that they...that they came back..."

"And when it turns out it's nothing like you hoped...like that your Back from the Dead daughter _isn't_ , in fact back from the dead?"

Zack nodded, smiling sadly, "Or someone ends up pinned to your living room wall like a fly?"

He looked so downcast, so _miserable_ , Selphie couldn't help but feel her heart go out for him. She reached out, linked her arm through his.

"It's not your fault. You don't have to believe me, but that won't stop me saying it. What Cloud did, he did himself..."

 _Maybe with some indirect assistance from a local high school girl with no filter and an unhealthy appetite for gossip_...

But she shut _that_ particular tiny voice up at once.

"It's no more your fault than Namine or whoever coming back to town is Amphitrite's. It happened _to_ you, not because of you."

"Yeah," Zack said with little conviction, though he did smile as he looked back at her, "Thanks, Selphie."

"Anytime."

They went on a little longer before Zack added, "So...um..." lifting the arm she'd taken.

"Oh. I'm sorry..."

"No, I mean, you don't have to hold...I mean, if you don't want to..."

"Well, I mean..."

"Just that, you know. I get sweaty, and...well, that might be..."

"Yeah, sure," she pulled her arm from his, "Sorry."

"No. nothing to be sorry about."

"Right," she nodded, only for him to echo the same, "Right."

They reached the place before long, passing in almost complete silence. Selphie looked up and down the quiet residential street, "Ta-da."

"Nice place," he looked the house up and down, its big bay windows, painted porch, the bright periwinkle door.

"Eh, mine's nicer," said Selphie.

"Is that a _treehouse_?"

"Tidus and Sora used to spend _hours_ in that thing. Kairi and I weren't allowed. I swear, you'd think they were making out or something..." she cleared her throat, "I'll do the talking."

"Talking?"

"Talking," and she strutted up the walkway to the front door, making a neat little fist with one hand and knocking smartly on the wood.

"It's, like, 10:00, Selphie," said Zack.

"Eh, I've been out later."

"No, I mean...what do we say if..."

"At this hour, I swear to God, it better be good..." a tired, wiry voice. Selphie made sure she had on her most adorable smile for the peephole. Little things.

The latch was undone, the door opened, " _Selphie_!" chirped a very different voice than the one they'd heard ten seconds earlier, "What a surprise."

The woman standing in the doorway was tall and lean, possessing what Selphie might have called an enviable figure, if only she didn't seem so exhausted by it. Bright green eyes glinted from beneath a set of rigid blond bangs framing a just as rigid bob cut that framed a face so bony and angular you might call it pointy and get away with it.

"Hi," Selphie greeted Tidus's mother, hoping her own smile was at least _somewhat_ more believable than the one she was being given, "This isn't a bad time, I hope?"

"Since you came all the way to my doorstep, I'm sure it doesn't matter _what_ kind of time it is, does it?"

She wasn't looking away from Selphie. That's fine. Selphie could play this game too, and play it better.

"We were just wondering if Tidus was around."

"Well, at this time of night, where else would he..."

"Could you just _lay off_?" demanded a familiar voice from somewhere up above. Tidus's mother seemed to flinch, but her expression didn't change, smiling determinedly, as if she might concentrate enough energy into those pearly whites to vaporize Selphie where she stood.

"It's late, Selphie. You should go home."

"It's _important._ Believe me, I wouldn't have bothered if it wasn't."

"Important? Like that murder scene you kids just...happened upon last night, yes? That kind of important?"

"We weren't _looking_ for a murder scene, it was Zack's apartment."

"Please," she shook her head, "I'm sure you could fool Celeste, God knows she's had her hands full..."

"What does Sora's Mom have to do with... _any_ of this?"

"You kids have been up to something. Don't think I haven't noticed. Tidus has been distracted for days, he got into a _fight_ , he got detention..."

"Please, like that was the first time..."

"Now everything that happened last night? Selphie, I'm sure Celeste is sick with worry, and _your_ parents can't be bothered to remember they _have_ children in the first place, but contrary to popular belief, I am not an idiot. The fact that you could even come to this door and _ask_ me, to my face, to see my son at _this_ hour, and not expect me to ask _any_ questions..."

"I didn't expect no questions, I did expect some _manners_."

Tidus's mother worked her face into a scowl, making to slam the door shut. Selphie drove her shoe into the jam, stopping her.

"It's very important."

"So is my son's well being, and frankly, I believe I'm more an authority where that's concerned than..."

"Selphie?"  
Selphie got on tiptoes to glimpse a sweaty, red-faced Tidus standing midway down the stairs, "Hi, Tidus! We were just wondering if you'd want to step out with us for..."

"Yeah, sure, let's do it," he didn't even wait for her to finish, just brushing past his mother to join Selphie on the patio.

"Tidus!" she protested, "Tidus, come back here!"

He was already heading down the walkway, past a visibly gobsmacked Zack. Selphie noticed he was wearing his Destiny High warm-up shirt, a pair of shorts. He hadn't even thought to grab a backpack or anything.

"Tidus!" his mother tried again, "Please?"

She turned to Selphie, "Do you have _any_ idea what you're doing to this family?" she shook her head, eyes blazing, " _Any_ damn idea?"

"Honey, I _wish_ I knew what was going on here..."

"There is a _cancer_ killing my family," she said brokenly, "And you're spreading it. God, you're spreading it!"

With a muffled wail, she slammed the door shut. Selphie could hear sobbing from the other side.

"Jesus," she muttered, turning back to see Zack standing on the sidewalk, staring at her with wide eyes.

"What's going on?" he asked her as she came over.

"Where's Tidus?" she asked in turn, spotting him walking up the block, "Ti!"'

She ran to catch up with him, Zack close behind, "What was all that..."

"You said we're going somewhere?" Tidus asked, "Where we going?"

"So we're just gonna _pretend_ that thing that happened didn't happen?"

"Nothing, happened, Selph..."

"Oh, come _on_..." she reached for his arm, turning him to face her, "Tidus..." she trailed off, "W-what happened to your face?"

Tidus's eyes got shifty. His free hand moved to the red mark on the side of his face, "Hurt myself in practice."

"Practice? Tidus, the season's over."

"Season's over, practice isn't," he wrenched his arm from her, "I'm _fine,_ Selphie. Where are we going?"

"T-Twilight," panted Zack, having caught up with them (though Selphie suspected he might've come along sooner had he not wanted to give them some privacy, for all the good it did), "Friend of Cloud's..."

" _Seriously?_ " Tidus demanded, "We're still on this?"

"You wanted to get away from home so badly, maybe you should've asked!" snapped Selphie, "Tidus, what is going..."

"You guys want my help right?" he demanded in a ghost of a voice, "That's why you came to get me."

"Of course, but..."

"Then I'm coming with you."

And he continued on. Selphie stood there, looking after him, a chill going up her spine. She was aware of Zack looking at her.

"I think, maybe, it _was_ a bad time," she said at last.

"That bruise on his face..."

Selphie shook her head, "He's not gonna explain it."

"Maybe he doesn't have to," said Zack, "Remember this morning? He limped into homeroom."

"Zack..."

"Look, I don't know. I barely knew Tidus. You grew up with him, you know his folks."

"Don't I ever," she sighed, "Let's...let's catch up. The way he is now, he might try _walking_ to Twilight."

"Wait, we're still going with him?"

"He wants to go."

"He wants to get away. I barely even explained to him."

"Better he's with us than wandering around somewhere in the middle of the night," Selphie wished she could sound firmer than she felt, "I know him. Come on, let's...let's catch a train."

They caught up with Tidus a block down from his place. Selphie couldn't help but notice he was still limping, despite how quickly he was moving. Every step must hurt.

She felt an ugly twisting in her gut, something suspiciously like guilt. Shouldn't she have noticed something? There _was_ something to notice, right? There had to be.

They didn't speak to each other at all until they reached the train station, a low brick building that, not too long ago had been a cozy, well-lit public enclave, even late at night, but was now a grimy, graffitied shanty house that any sensible person would take care not to frequent after sundown.

Selphie missed sensibility.

"Aw...crud," Zack muttered, rifling through his bag.

"Something the matter?" asked Selphie.

"Thought I had an extra ticket," he shrugged, frowning, "Sorry, I...I should've made sure, but...you know, I wasn't counting on you guys coming with me."

"You _weren't_?" asked Tidus tersely. Selphie glared at him, "I figured we were a team. _You_ clearly agree somewhere deep down."

He said nothing to that. Selphie dug around in her purse a bit, filching out five dollars in singles, dimes and quarters, "Let's hope that stupid machine hasn't gone and given up yet."

The inside of the station was dingy, poorly lit by flickering fluorescent lights, and scented with the delicate fragrances of cat piss. Selphie wrinkled up her nose in distaste.

"Starting to get why Kairi's Grandma's always complaining about paying taxes," she nodded to the ticket turnstile, "Come on, before something jumps out at us."

"There's no one else here," said Zack reassuringly.

"That's the creepy part," she told him, crossing to the turnstile.

Slipping money into the ticket 'machine' was a crapshoot in any event, but when you had somewhere to be in the gloomy hours it was kinda like making a deal with the devil. Who knows where it might end, but damned if you didn't have to do it anyway.

"Tickets are what, $2.50?"

"That's for round trip," said Zack.

"We're not _walking_ back," said Tidus.

"Not on that leg, you're not."

Selphie flinched as Zack hastily explained himself, "Look, man, I'm not trying to get in your face about anything, but if you want to tell us something..."

"I don't."

"Three tickets, Sunset Line on to Twilight," she looked up at the cracked, grimy electrical signpost on the wall, "Next train's in five minutes. We're in luck."

They descended the steep, worn concrete steps to the platform. A hot, underground brush of air hit Selphie in the face, stinking the arid, sour stink of the subway.

She couldn't help but watch the careful way Tidus descended the stairs, his hand on the railing, moving determinedly, but with an obvious hobble to his step. He was hurt and set on not looking it, even though he knew they knew.

Selphie wished she _really_ knew. Even now it felt almost like she was imagining it. Maybe that's how he wanted her to feel about it. A fantasy she made up, so they never had to talk about it again.

They reached the platform. That hot breeze whistled through the tunnel washing over all of them. Selphie shuddered, "Gotta love the atmosphere."

"It smells," said Zack helpfully.

Selphie sighed patiently, "Atmosphere, Zack, like _looks_ , aesthetics. Not the O-Zone."

"Oh. I get it. Still... _that's_ pretty bad too."

Selphie brushed some hair away from her forehead, "This is creepy. Anyone else feel like we're being watched?"

"There's nobody here, Selphie," said Tidus at once.

"How do you know? It's dark! Anyway, I said it _feels_ like we're being watched."

They all looked up and down the platform. Almost all the lights down here had run out long ago, so there huge gaps of empty darkness between the pockets of fluorescent light. Look into any of them too long and you began to see things...shapes, figures. Maybe people, standing, watching.

"So who are we looking for?"

Selphie screamed, whirling around to face an unimpressed Tidus, "Don't _do_ that!"

"Sorry," he shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts, "What, who did you _think_ I was?"

"Don't make fun of her, man," said Zack, "We're all on edge."

Tidus looked at him out of the corner of his eye, "Yeah. On edge."

Selphie sighed, "A friend of Cloud's," she found herself whispering, just in case those figures in the dark were more real than imagined, "She's a cop from Twilight."

"And we're going to visit this cop from Twilight in the middle of the night..."

"You didn't have to come!" snapped Zack, "But you were in such a hurry to get away, so..."

Tidus took a step forward, fists clenched.

"Oh, _enough_!" Selphie protested stepping between them, "I swear to God, I am about _sick_ of..."

She had a really good spiel laid out. Pity it got drowned out by the roar of an incoming engine. A glaring white headlamp illuminated the platform as the train came careening out of the darkness, kicking up a rough, sterile wind to toss their hair around and swallow Selphie's words into oblivion.

The doors opened with a sharp ding of an electric bell as an automated voice explained, " _This is the Sunset Line train to Market Plaza, making all local stops from Destiny Heights to Sunset Summit_."

Selphie sighed, "Behave," turning and heading into the train.

The train was grimy and hot, but at least it didn't smell as bad as the platform outside it. Selphie held her bag close to her, navigating her way carefully down the narrow aisle, looking for a seat free of both holes _and_ unexplained mystery goo.

"This'll have to do," Selphie reached a row of seats near the end of the car free of foreign detritus, with the exception of a faded tag proclaiming ' _Hawkinz wuz here'_.

"What're you looking for?" asked Zack as Selphie returned to the inside of her purse.

"I've got some wipes in here somewhere..."

" _This is_ Destiny Heights _,_ " said the prerecorded voice as the doors slid closed, the train jolting forward, sending Selphie jolting forward, " _The next stop is_ Beaumont Boulevard- Shopping Plaza."

The doors slid closed and the train went on tumbling forward, rocking Selphie off her feet. She careened forward, toward the sticky seat, saved at the last moment by Zack's arms placed none-too-gracefully around her midsection, pulling her away.

She looked up at him, breath still unsteady. He explained, in faltering tones, "It...um...it looked sticky."

"Not sticky," said Selphie, "Just...not clean."

"Oh," he nodded, "Right."

He stepped away from her abruptly and, with all the grace of a drunk trying to find his sleeves, peeled his letter jacket off and draped it over the seat.

"Just, you know...just in case."

"Oh," Selphie nodded, "Thanks. That's...nice of you."

"Sure."

Tidus let out an aggrieved sigh, going to sit to the jacket's left. Selphie came more to her senses, clearing her throat and sitting down, with Zack lowering himself to her left.

They progressed in this way for a while, sitting still and quiet, trundling down the track. The lights in the car were coming in and out of focus. Occasionally she imagined she could see figures standing in the darkness of the tunnel beyond the windows. But she knew these were just imaginings, conjurations of a nervous mind.

It became easier to convince herself that's all the _other_ figures at been too, back at the platform. She was just nervous. Why shouldn't she be? But there was no fear. No danger.

It was all going to be o...

"Well, howdy, partners."

Selphie screamed so loudly that Zack screamed as well, Tidus letting out an expletive. They turned, as one down to the front of the car where a heretofore unnoticed heap of grimy clothes had come to life, a rumpled up cowboy hat crowning the spectacle.

"Fancy seeing you here."

" _Kinneas_?" demanded Tidus.

"You know him," Irvine lifted his head, his eyes glinting mischievously beneath the brim of his hat, "Hey, Selphie."

Selphie rolled her eyes, "Sorry, Irvine, did we break into your place?"

"Very funny."

"What are you doing on the Sunset Line?" asked Zack.

"What are _you_ doing on the Sunset Line?" Irvine chuckled, "Didn't think so."

Selphie sighed, crossing her legs, "Irvine, I know critical thinking's not one of your strong suits, but surely you can appreciate what a funny coincidence this is."

"Coincidence?"

"Us all ending up on the same train."

"What, you three didn't come on together? Not what I saw."

"Us three being on _this_ train, at _this_ hour, at the same time as you."

"So...what's your ticket? I followed you and got on the same train?"

"Forget it," said Tidus, "We would've seen."

"Yeah," he nodded, "Probably would've, or you'd think. Then, you didn't see the _other_ guy."

Tidus scoffed as Selphie bristled, " _What_ other guy, Irvine?"

"What, you don't know? Color me shocked."

"I can color you a few things, man," threatened Tidus.

"The _guy_ ," said Irvine, "Next car back, got on the train with you," he smiled grimly, "He's watching you. Right now."

"Shithead's lying," said Tidus, "Come on, it's not..."

"Whoa," breathed Zack, turning around to look out the glass panel in the car's rear door.

Selphie followed his gaze, and felt her heart skip a beat. Standing in the car, leaning against one of the pylons, was a man. Or at least, it looked like a man. Tall, broad, dark jacket, a hoodie, the hood lifted over his head, obscuring his face.

He lowered his head when they turned to look at him. He knew they were watching.

"You guys have a stalker," said Irvine approvingly, "Fucking sweet."

"Who is he?" asked Selphie.

"You're asking _me_?"

"Oh, I _knew_ there was someone at the station, I _knew_ it..."

"Maybe it's nothing," said Zack, "He could just be some guy..."

"He's been _watching_ you," said Irvine, "the whole time."

"Sure, let's take your word for it..." said Tidus.

"Then don't," he shrugged, "But we all know what was the _last_ weird thing to happen on this train. There was some mystery guy there too."

"Sora and Riku..." Selphie ran her hands down her face, "Oh my God..."

"Selph, calm down."

" _You_ calm down!" she snapped at him, "Don't you tell _me_ to calm down! Who the hell do you think you..."

"You wanna lose him? Let me help you."

"Oh, this should be great..." began Tidus, but Irvine went on, still smiling easily, as if this were all some big joke.

"Beaumont's the next stop, we probably make it in like, two minutes. Go up to the next car, get out, leave the station, don't look back. At first, he'll think you just changed cars to get away from him, by the time he figures out you jumped trains, you'll be gone."

"Oh, you _are_ a genius. You using drug store thrillers for rolling paper now?"

"Listen to me or not, I guess you could always go to him, ask what he wants..."

"He's staring again," said Zack.

"What? What's he look like?" demanded Tidus.

"How am I supposed to know?"

"You said he was staring!"

"He was looking up, that doesn't mean I can see his _face_..."

"Then how do you know he's staring?"

"Jesus, Selph, what're you _doing_ with these guys?"

Selphie glared at him, "Solving crimes. It's a hoot."

"I bet. Listen," he leaned over the back of his seat, voice low, though Selphie was able to understand every syllable as distinctly as if he were whispering right in her ear, "You'll be okay. Just move, don't look back."

"You think so?"

"You're a smart kid, why not? Hey, and um, after this is over, there's this cool food truck on Allwine and Anselmo, they've got chimichangas. I don't know what that is..."

"You're adorably shameless," Selphie shouldered her bag, "Thanks for the tip."

She nudged Tidus in the side, giving him a nod, then tapped Zack on the arm and did the same. They all looked at each other, varying degrees of uncertainty plain on their faces.

"Let's do this."

"Good luck, you crazy kids."

"What about you?" asked Zack.

"What _about_ me?"

"What if he tries to ask you where we went?"

"Aw, is that _concern_ I detect? Fair, I do believe my loins just quickened."

"Well, slow them down," Selphie told him, "Come on, boys."

" _Boys?_ " demanded Tidus, but Selphie was already moving down the aisle.

"I can't believe this is happening," said Zack.

"Yeah, well it is..."

"It's actually _stuck_!"

"What are you..." Selphie turned and saw what he meant, viciously tugging at his letter jacket, which had indeed become glued to the seat.

"You said there was nothing on it!"

"Well, maybe if I'd found my wipes..."

"He's coming!"

Tidus was right. Their watcher had resumed the pursuit, moving closer to the car door as a quick, deliberate pace.

"Forget the jacket!" Tidus demanded.

"It's my _jacket_!"

Selphie threw open the door to the next car, braving the blast of wind that came in through the opening, "Come _on_!"

"What do you think he wants?" asked Zack, catching up in time for them to pass, in single file, over the rickety metal terrace into the next car.

"He's some guy in a hood riding the train at the witching hour. What do you _think_ he wants?"

"Wait."

"Zack, it's just a jacket. You'll live..."

"Tidus!"

At which point Selphie realized Tidus wasn't with them. Zack blanched, "His leg, we shoulda realized..."

"I'll get him. Don't worry."

" _You_?"

"Me. Maybe I'll grab the jacket on the way, we'll see how it..."

"Selphie!" he ran alongside her back toward the door. But Selphie had barely touched the handle when it was thrown open into her face, knocking her almost clear off her feet.

"What're you still doing here?" Tidus demanded.

"Saving _you_ , you meathead!" Selphie screeched, "What were you doing?"

"Here's your _fucking_ jacket!" Tidus tossed the thing at Zack, who stared at it, gobsmacked, "Er...thanks man, really."

Tidus clearly had no patience for sentiments, "Come on, we don't have much..."

" _This station is_ BeaumontBoulevard."

The train screeched to a halt. They looked at each other, a wordless understanding passing between them. In a second, they'd peeled out of the car and onto the Beaumont Boulevard platform.

" _Left a good job in the city/Working for the man every night and day..._ "

A woman sitting on a bench and listening to a Walkman looked up at them in a cursory fashion. She looked vaguely familiar. Selphie pegged her as one of the waitresses from Cid's, the one that wasn't in her thirties or dead.

" _And I never lost one minute of sleeping,_ :" she sang softly in a low, sultry voice, " _Worrying about the way things might have been..._ "

"So..." Zack panted, clutching a stitch in his side, "Now what?"

"It's not like we got very far," said Selphie, "We couldn't even get past the town limits."

"Think you guys are kinda missing the point here."

" _Big wheel keep on turning/Proud Mary keep on burning..._ "

Tidus continued, "Some guy just followed us on the train. We're not gonna ask why? Because it feels we should be asking why."

"Tidus, it's not news it hasn't exactly been safe around here lately..."

"It's _us_!" Tidus snapped, "Come on, Selphie, you're smarter than that."

"Smart enough not to let a boy tell me how smart I am."

He stared blankly, "What if someone figured it out?"

"Figured _what_ out?"

"Cloud! Cloud, Aerith... _us_ ," he looked at Zack, "Someone hears we're trying to find him..."

"Don't put this on Zack," said Selphie.

"It was his idea..."

"It was _my_ idea to come along. And to bring you."

Tidus looked at her, something like anger in his eyes. But there was something else as well. A lurching resentment, maybe betrayal.

" _Rolling/Rolling/Rolling down a riv..._ oh!"

The _other_ singing waitress was unable to finish her lyric, cutting off with a cry as she dove out of the way of a rapidly advancing figure... in a black hoodie.

"What the hell..." she began.

"He got off the train!" said Zack, unnecessarily.

"If Kinneas could think of it..." said Tidus.

They started running down the length of the platform, their pursuer some distance behind, slowed down by the waitress's timely deployment of a can of pepper spray.

"Wait!" Selphie realized.

" _What?_ "

"I just realized," she panted, "We're going the wrong way!"

The stairs off the platform were back the way they'd gone. This direction there was nothing but the old metal railing at the platform's limit.

"Oh fu..."

Tidus's swear go caught up in the blare of a horn, another bright lamp. A train was coming up on their right side.

Selphie didn't waste time to think; she grabbed Tidus's arm with one hand, Zack's in the other, and dashed into the train the second the doors opened.

" _This is the Crossway Line to_ Traverse Central _, making all local stops._ "

"What the hell was that?" gasped Tidus, breathlessly sliding down the inside of the freshly closed door.

"I panicked," Selphie shook sweat-matted hair from her face, "Got us out of _that_ mess, didn't I?"

"I'll say," said Zack, "Good thinking, Selph, really."

She nodded in acknowledgment, "Just that we're heading to the wrong town with the wrong tickets."

"Eh, they never check tickets anyway," Zack shrugged.

"What?" prompted Tidus, "We're not...we're not _actually_ going on with this, right?"

"We got this far!" argued Selphie.

"We've gotten _nowhere_!" Tidus shook his head, "Selphie, I know what you're trying to do..."

"Oh, this should be rich."

"Guys, is this really..."

"And you're not helping, either," Tidus rounded on Zack, "Look, I appreciate you care about your brother, man. Really, I do. I respect that. But Selphie..."

"If you're about to tell me what _I'm_ feeling, Tidus, here's a word of advice. _Don't._ "

"Ever since Sora and Kairi disappeared, you've been...looking for something. You told me yourself, you hate being alone!"

"Oh don't you _dare_ just twist my words around..."

"Be honest with yourself, Selphie. All of this...Zack, Cloud, everything, it's just some...some project to you."

Selphie scoffed, "That's...that's not..."

"Stop _pretending_ , Selphie! Sora disappears, Zack shows up. And then Cloud, a problem right there for you to fix..."

"That is _ridiculous..._ "

"You basically admitted it yourself. Going on about how the rest of us always treated Zack, like you'd ever looked at him twice before..."

She slapped him. Tidus shook on his feet, his bad leg swaying beneath him. He glared at her, breathing raggedly.

"Why don't you say what you want, Tidus?" she asked harshly, "Just pretend I didn't figure it out a long time ago."

The three of them stood there, looking at each other. She was aware of Zack shifting on his feet, avoiding keeping his attention on either of them too long. She felt bad for him. Worse now, that Tidus has said what he said.

"Forget it," he said at last, turning on his heel.

Selphie watched him go, feeling her blood roaring in her ears. He moved off down the aisle, carefully on one good leg, opening the door at the end of car, and slamming it shut behind him.

"Selphie..." Zack began.

"It's fine."

"No, it's not..."

"It's not true," she said, "What...what he said about...about you and...you and me. That's not...I never...I'm _not_..."

There were tears in her eyes., she raised her hand to her mouth, trying to force a sob down...

"Wait!"

They both turned at once, Selphie managing a, " _Oh, for Christ's sake!_ "

The door at the front of the car was thrown open, and that familiar hoodie-clad figure came storming down the aisle again.

"Won't you just _quit_?" demanded Zack, already running, Selphie close behind him.

"I don't want to hurt you! Listen, just...just hear me out!"

"I've heard _more_ than enough for one day!" Selphie shot back, "Or... _ever_..."

"Aw, c'mon!" he argued, "I know about your brother!"

Zack stopped in his tracks, "You...you what?"

Their pursuer had stopped running too, lowering his hood to reveal a flushed, lightly-freckled face. Messy blond hair, a distinctive scar under one eye. Selphie spotted a single cross-shaped earring shining in the dim light of the train car.

"Cloud, right? I know about him."

"Zack..." Selphie said softly, "This guy isn't what I'd call a reputable citizen."

"That don't mean nothing!"

"So it does mean something?"

"I can help you find him! Listen, I don't know what you know, but we're not the only ones looking for him."

"No?" asked Zack. Selphie may as well have stopped existing, "Who else is there?"

"Zack..."

"Wish I knew, but they're close," he was flushed, breathing heavily, "Listen, there's not a lot of time. But if we could just put together what we... _argh_!"

" _This station is_ Traverse Terminal _._ "

He fell forward, breathing heavily, "Shit...shit...fuck!"

"You okay?" Zack asked.

"He's bluffing!" said Selphie, "Zack, come on..."

"But..."

" _Please_!" she found there were tears on her cheeks, looking into Zack's eyes.

She couldn't wait for him to see reason. She was afraid she wouldn't be able to wait for anything ever again. She took Zack by the arm and dragged him through the doors and onto the platform just before they closed.

She could almost hear their pursuer's cries fade into the distance as the train roared out of sight.

Traverse Terminal was a big grand building with gabled glass ceilings. You could see the stars through them, and the moon. It had a quiet elegance to it, an understated romance.

And, now, an unfathomable sadness.

"Selphie..." Zack began, "What was that?"

"He was _lying_ , Zack! An...an honest person doesn't _chase_ three kids over two trains..."

"Maybe he had a reason!"

"A bad reason!"

"You couldn't know that. Selphie, what if he knows where Cloud is, what if he wants to help... You said you want to help me..."

"I do! It's not a lie, it's not some game, I _do_!"

"Maybe. But...but sometimes it feels like you're just trying to protect me. Take care of me like...like some kind of pet."

Selphie looked at him, "Tidus can say whatever he wants..."

"He knows you. And, Selphie...I don't like what he said..."

"I can't _lose_ you!" she cried, "I can't. Not you, not anyone else. Not again."

She broke down crying, unable to stop, shoulders heaving with the force of her sobs. They were stabbing, horrible jolts, rocking her on her feet.

She barely noticed when Zack put his arm around her, let her cry into his jacket. And, when she did realize, she only wanted to cry harder, scream louder, punish herself for a crime she couldn't describe but that she knew she had committed.

* * *

 **A/N** : I haven't written a scene of the length and breadth of that Selphie one in ages. There won't be a lot more huge scenes like that in this story, as I've been working to narrow the scope on things these last several chapters, but I felt that in this case it was somewhat unavoidable.

Chapter 28 will be up, returning to schedule, next Friday! See you then.


	28. Allies and Accomplices

**A/N:** Welcome back! A shorter chapter this week, but if you take that as an indicator of anything, let it be that things really jump up again in the next one.

Enjoy!

* * *

"Good morning, Radiant. I'm Mirage Incantata and _this_ is DTV..."

"Villains. Heartless villains all."

Celeste looked over her shoulder to where Milo was perching himself awkwardly on the end of the sofa, twisting his hands around in his lap, scowling at the newscast on her T.V.

"Don't tell me she's Jane's _replacement._ I've seen her every 6:00 A.M for months."

He nodded, "You do and have. They gave her Jane's show too."

"Oh..." Celeste took the carafe from the coffee pot, pouring it out into two mugs, "That's...well, I suppose since she's gone..."

"It's not because she's _gone_ , that's merely a handy excuse. This has been in the wind a long time, Jane smelled it ages ago. They've had that smirking side of statuary lined up for primetime news since she walked in the door. Jane might as well have been given her walking papers the day they hired her, if only she hadn't signed a contract."

"But they can't just _do_ that, right?"

"They already did."

Celeste sighed, "Cream and sugar?"

"I don't deserve sugar," he said morosely.

Celeste stirred some 2% milk into his mug in any case. It seemed that to give him black coffee would be as good as putting cyanide in the cup.

"I mean they can't just do a thing like that without addressing that Jane is _gone_ , right? I mean...one of their own reporters is missing, isn't that news?"

"Half the reason I wanted to see you before school this morning."

Celeste thought of asking what the other half was, but some tiny, maybe girlish impulse kept her from it. She lowered herself to sit on the sofa beside him, handing him his mug. No sooner had she done this than a wild, white blur jumped up to sit between them.

Milo let out a cry, coffee sloshing around in his mug. Thinking first of her upholstery and then of the _last_ time Milo had spilled coffee in her presence, Celeste reached out with her free hand to steady his arm.

"I'm sorry about her," she said, after some extended clearing of her throat, "It's just...that's sort of like her spot."

Milo looked at where Marie was making herself very comfortable in the space between them, "S-should I move?"

"No!" she shook her head, "She'll...we'll be fine."

Milo nodded about a dozen times, taking a sip of coffee, "This...this is very good."

"You think so? I'm always afraid I make it too light."

"Burning it too black and it loses its flavor, becomes all about the punch. Not a lot of people know that. But in South America, they take extra care not to burn the coffee too black. Derives from indigenous religious practice. Fascinating stuff."

"That's your specialty? South America?"

"Oh, no. No, no, no...that was Professor Porter's line of country, so to speak."

"Jane's father?"

"Brilliant mind. A little scatterbrained, but then, I shouldn't talk."

Celeste smiled at him, "I think our brains have _all_ been fairly scattered at this point."

"Maybe so. Well, anyway, he and my parents did lecture tours together. He was an archaeologist, they were the anthropologists. We'd spend whole seasons in Colombia, Brazil...Peru," his face took on a soft, wistful quality, "Peru, most of all. That's how Jane and I came to be friends. I saw her more than I ever saw anyone else my own age."

Celeste took her own sip. It wasn't bad at all, and she was aware of Milo watching her as he drank, as if expecting her to say something about it.

"So...you wanted to talk to me about Jane?"

"I figure you've a right to know," he was quiet for a while, as if organizing his words in his head, "I went to the DPD yesterday, after school. Filed a missing persons' report."

Celeste blinked, "You...you _did_?"

"I know what you're thinking."

"Please tell me."

"She told us not to...not to tell the police. Matter of fact, she seemed pretty urgent about it... But it's not telling the police. Not really. Well, not telling them _all_ we know, just...just making it known she's gone. Celeste, nobody else would have bothered."

Celeste shifted in her seat, "She has nobody else? Her father..."

"He's tenured at Christ Church, in Oxford. Jane calls him now and again, but there's often weeks in between. And call me a coward, but I didn't want to drag him into this, with all we _really_ know..."

"I understand. No, it's...it wouldn't do anything telling him."

"And obviously the station couldn't give a gimlet," Milo nodded to Mirage on the T.V as if in further evidence of his point, "Like I said, they've been looking for an excuse to replace Jane for years. At least letting it be _known_ she's been reported missing..." he sighed, "Well, really, I know it doesn't accomplish anything."

"It makes it public knowledge."

"How many other disappearances are public knowledge by now?" he shrugged, "I don't recall any big news breaks. Sorry."

"Don't be. You're not wrong. But I understand."

"It feels like...like we're _doing_ something. Even if it's next to useless. And, after all, Jane didn't say don't tell the police she was _missing_. Anyway, it's more a miracle the police didn't get on to it, she's a public figure, local news be damned..."

"She seemed more concerned about _why_ she was missing. The police not knowing about that."

The unspoken _rest_ of the story seemed to settle over them. Marie, oblivious, purred contentedly between them. Celeste stroked her gently up and down her back, thinking to herself.

"What about the letter?"

"What?" he blurted.

Celeste blinked, "Jane's letter. Have you finished cracking the code, or...or..."

"Oh. I'm sorry," his shoulders slumped, "I've been so caught up in my thoughts, I...I forgot you didn't know."

"Didn't know?" she leaned forward, "Didn't know what?"

"The letter...I...I'm afraid it's been...well, misplaced."

Celeste raised her eyebrows, " _Misplaced_? You lost it?"

"Well, that does make me sound terribly careless," he cleared his throat, "Which, of course, I suppose, in a way..."

"Never mind that. Do you have any idea what might've _happened_ to it?"

"As to that..." he sighed, "It might be a trifle more sinister than me just...dropping it."

"You mean someone took it?"

Milo nodded, "I didn't realize that night. Things were chaotic, we were all panicking...trying to...to figure out what to say. How to say it. And of course, it was barely a second before that detective showed up... It wasn't until after we'd left that I noticed..."

"Oh my God," Celeste lifted a finger to her lips, brow furrowed in thought, "So if someone...someone at Zack's apartment took it...that doesn't exactly leave a very long list. But that would mean..."

"I spoke to her yesterday, at school," he said heavily.

"Selphie?"

He nodded, "You remember, she was the one that took interest in the letter that night, at the hospital?"

"She recognized Cloud's name," Celeste nodded, "She knew. They all knew."

"Tidus and Zack?"

"They're hiding something. I almost said as much to that detective, but...well, that bridges a bit too close on 'telling the police', doesn't it?"

"I suppose so. Still, you think..."

"They couldn't have told Leonhart anything either. I think we'd know if they had. But they have their reasons for keeping what they know secret. Maybe they thought your letter would help..."

"I intimated as much to Selphie, tried to tell her it was no use _having_ the letter if she didn't know how to crack the rest of the code. She avoided my questions, claimed she didn't have it, then put her head right between Zack and Tidus, as if I couldn't see."

"She's very headstrong," mused Celeste, "Has an independent streak to her too. She likes to be in charge. I'm sure the boys realize that."

"Well, there must be _something_ we can do," Milo took another swig of his coffee, "The last thing we need is three teenagers getting embroiled in this ugly business."

"Much better having a single mother and a history teacher broiling in it, right?" Celeste smiled wryly, but she agreed all the same, "I'm sure they have their own reasons for keeping this all quiet. Self-preservation, or...or maybe some promise they made. But they know about Cloud, they know he's caught up in this, they might even know where he went..."

"And why he wanted to kill his self-professed soul mate," said Milo sadly.

Celeste considered, feeling Marie purr contentedly in her lap. Selphie was a miniature powerhouse, and somehow she'd only been emboldened since Sora and Kairi disappeared. Or maybe it just seemed that way. Maybe it was some kind of compensation, scrounging up strength in the face of loss.

Celeste had been wondering how to manage that.

"They're just kids, Milo."

"So was the Shunzhi Emperor and he ended up conquering most all of China," he hesitated, looking at Celeste apologetically, "Qing Dynasty," as if that was supposed to reinforce the point.

"I've known them, Selphie and Tidus at least, since they were little. And Zack...Cloud may be his brother, but Zack's got a good heart. A conscience. If they're hiding something, they must believe they have good reason."

"The road to hell's been paved with better intentions."

"Even so...if we can find some way to...to connect to them, convince them we're on the same team, maybe then..."

The phone rang, its harsh, shrill tone splitting into the increasing tension of their quiet scene. Marie darted from Celeste's lap to sprint down the hall to Sora's room. Milo squealed, spilling coffee down his front in what Celeste supposed must have been a foregone conclusion.

"I'm fine!" he howled, skipping around on both feet, fanning madly at his trousers, "I'm fine, really, you should get... _oh God_...you should get..."

Celeste nodded, hurrying to the phone, tossing Milo the roll of paper towels from the adjacent kitchen counter as she did so.

"Hello?"

The voice that answered her was high, somewhat tired, yet with a forceful determination despite its polite tone, "Is this Celeste?"

"This is she," Celeste frowned, "May I ask who's calling?"

Milo raised his eyebrows, taking a break from furiously attempting to dry his entire lower body to look up at her.

"Oh. I'm sorry, I...I forgot you...you won't know me...I'm Dr. Fair, Zack's mother."

"Oh? Yes, I...I think maybe we've met once or..."

"I'm very sorry to bother you," there was a new desperation in her voice, "It's Zack."

"Zack," Celeste locked eyes with Milo across the room.

"Yes. He never came home last night. I've no idea where..."

The phone fell from Celeste's hand, clattering uselessly against the wall. She was barely aware she'd done it, she was barely aware of anything.

She lifted shaking hands to her mouth, looking up at a confused Milo. She wanted to say something, but words didn't, or couldn't come.

* * *

The window was cracked, shattered outward, bits of broken glass lying on the asphalt, the dirt of the road, glinting in the pale dawn sun.

Inside, the car was empty. Some leaves and other bits of woodland junk were scattered over the seats, the floor, likely brought in by light winds during the night. Nothing distinctive, nothing useful.

Squall sighed, switching his flashlight off and withdrawing from the window to stand in the empty, still desolation of the road, surveying this abandoned scene. He found himself wracked not with his usual cool, analytical sense, but with a dread, an unease. He'd seen so many worse crime scenes, he'd seen blood and tears, pain and anger, grief and betrayal. He'd fought down the urge to be sick, to retch, to scream, punch a wall so many times he may as well have developed a specialized reflex for it.

But the broken glass, the lonely car, just left behind here at the side of the road...somehow it left him with foreboding. Something terrible had happened here. If anything else, this was at least the beginning of something terrible.

"Makes quite a picture, doesn't it?"

Squall turned sharply, shoulders going rigid, fingers twitching for half a second to the holster at his waist. Nothing of course. And, even so, who _would_ it have been? He was getting paranoid. Letting this all get to him.

The tall, dignified older figure coming out of the TPD patrol car wore a wry smile, eyes younger than the rest of him shining under stark white hair, "I half expect some starving artist type to come wandering out of the woods looking to sneak some shots for a portfolio."

Squall wasn't sure what to say to that. He never was sure what to say where Cecil Harvey was concerned.

"It's suggestive, isn't it?" the commissioner prompted, cocking one skinny black eyebrow, "Raises several questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"Oh, I'm sure I could tell you. But you've been bent over it a while. Surely you've formed some opinions of your own."

This felt like a trap, or at least a particularly one-sided game. Squall crossed his arms, knowing better than to try and worm his way out of this one.

"Broken glass on the road around the car. Next to none inside. The window was broken outward," he listed these clinical, automatic observations, for the first time in a long time aware of how effortlessly these kinds of things came to him, how mechanical.

"Plastic ties on the floor, unevenly cut. Someone was tied up. Tear marks would indicate some creative break-out methods. Possibly teeth," he shrugged, "Left behind. Broke out. Eventually."

He bent down, retrieving a the solitary key from the road just beneath the car, "This was left here. Wouldn't have been much use to whoever was _inside_ the car. I'm thinking someone else was supposed to find it. Give her a hand."

"Her?" Harvey asked.

By way of explanation, Squall walked around the back of the car, indicating the license plate. Saying nothing, he reached into the hairline groove behind the plate and retrieved a grimy scrap of notepaper between two fingers.

Harvey's eyes widened slightly, "That must've taken some searching."

"A bit. You're gonna hide a secret message in a car, you'd probably pick the glove box, crack in the seats, maybe the engine or the exhaust pipe..."

"Not many would think of the license plate."

"Unless they spent hours every day comparing local plate I.D's. Voluntarily," he unfolded the note, handing it to Harvey.

He scanned it quickly, mouth forming the words silently, indistinctly. At length, he looked up at Squall, "She seemed quite convinced it would be you who found this."

"She's a good cop. But dammit if she doesn't ride her gut before listening to reason."

"Maybe so. But it seems her gut didn't lead her astray this time," Harvey handed the letter back to Squall, who furrowed his brow.

"Isn't this evidence?"

"Evidence of what? She was kidnapped, she broke free, and now she's looking for her kidnappers. You know Detective Kisigari better than I, I'm sure you'd formed the same conclusion before you even set eyes on that note," he considered, "Well-intentioned as I'm sure leaving it here was."

Squall couldn't say Harvey was wrong there, sighing as he folded up the paper, tucking it into his pocket.

"She's angry," he said at last, "Betrayed, wants answers."

"The story of us all," Harvey sighed, an enigmatic smile playing on his face. Eventually, he looked up, "Squall Leonhart," as if he'd only now remembered, "It is a hard job we do."

Squall found he couldn't exactly say anything to that.

"Our oath is to protect people, keep the peace, maintain order...but those are all just words, aren't they?" he put his hands in the pockets of his jacket, nodding up the road. Squall glanced at Harvey's patrol car, but he seemed content to leave it there, shouldered up against the crime scene.

"As with most things in this life, the truth is messier than the mission statement. It's one thing to take an oath, another thing entirely to keep it. Or to know when _not_ to. I think we can both speak to the cost of that decision."

"Commissioner Harvey..."

"Ours is not an enviable responsibility. If anything, it's a burden, and choosing to set it down can be as exhausting as carrying it."

"Are we talking about me, Yuffie, or Saix?"

It was a short time before Harvey spoke, "You've been briefed, then? The...situation at the gas station?"

Squall nodded, "Taken in accord with Yuffie's letter, it's not doing anyone any favors to speculate. Not when it's all right there."

"This Saix...the Mayor's son, isn't he?"

Squall shrugged, "He never spoke about it, but...yes. The Mayor's son."

He could never be certain if that tidbit was more a point of embarrassment or of pain for Saix. He only knew what had occurred the one time he'd ever brought it up, looking over pages of personal information, recommendations, even certain lightly redacted records of criminal activity.

" _Politician's son, huh?_ "

" _Will my answering 'yes' effect this interview in any way? Because, if so, I think there's certain constitutional amendments that would have something to say about that._ "

" _Nothing like that. But you're not the first political heir to office to come walking into this station looking for a badge_. _I think I oughta tell you, your father can be in charge of the whole hemisphere, you'll have to put the work in, all the same._ "

Saix's expression hadn't changed at all, though there had been a slight note of irritation creeping into his tone as he answered, " _Duly noted._ "

In hindsight, it had been a misread to ever assume Saix intended to make any mint out of his father, his family, his past. Whatever he wanted from back then, whatever he needed to resolve...he wanted it kept well away from his career.

Or so it had been, at least.

"Saix never cared very much about his father."

"It's all good and well to _say_ a thing like that, isn't it?" Harvey chuckled, "In a way, disowning yourself is as final a choice as any."

His eyes seemed to search Squall, who tensed under their quiet, not-quite-judgmental judgment, bristling silently.

"I'm sure there's a reason you're bringing all this up."

"Prickly as ever, Detective."

"It's been a rough day."

"It's not even 8:00."

"I said it was rough, didn't I?"

Harvey sighed, "I was only wondering how much of yourself you see in this Saix. And I only wonder that because I saw some of it in him too."

Squall stopped there in the middle of the road, "That's it, then? Why you've taken it on yourself to drop by? Afraid I'm up to old tricks, taking things personally..."

"Nonsense. You're a professional, Leonhart, perhaps too much so for your own good. It's only that you have a tendency to...to get close to people."

"Try telling Yuffie that."

"Am I a fool then for thinking it? That this would be the second time you trusted too much, and someone was put in danger?"

Squall rounded on him. Harvey's expression didn't change as he said, "That is what you're thinking, isn't it?"

"It's not the same. Rinoa..."

"Rinoa Heartily was a headstrong young woman with lofty principles and a kind heart. I can't speak to Yuffie's principles, but her heart seems to be in the same place. We're told that disposition gets you far in this job, but we've both been at this long enough to know what a cruel lie that is."

Squall sighed, "She trusted Saix. Wanted to give him a push in the right direction, nudge him out of the nest."

"You would have acted differently?"

"You're trying to trap me, I can't say I appreciate it."

"Rinoa took a chance on you, once upon a time. Didn't she?"

Squall glared at him, "She did. Look how it ended up."

Harvey's glare hardened, even as his tone softened, "You became a capable officer, a sharp detective, and the keenest undercover operative in this district."

"You're saying it was an even deal, then? A learning experience?"

"I'm saying we cannot choose the events that mold us in this life, but we _can_ choose how we are molded. Rinoa made a choice, as did you, as did Yuffie, breaking from that car and leaving that note for you to find," he frowned, "Saix made a choice too."

"I didn't say I was guilty."

"There's a handy saying about guilty consciences. They have no accuser," he stroked his upper lip with one finger, "I heard about Seifer Almasy."

 _What is he, using a checklist?_ Squall thought ruefully. Rinoa was one thing, Saix another, but he was in no mood to litigate _Seifer_. He had to be confident _Seifer_ , at least, was the one person nobody could claim authority on over him. Not now, not anymore, sad as the truth of it all was.

"I must admit, I'm surprised you weren't tasked with tracking him down."

"He wasn't charged with anything," Squall replied automatically.

"But you _did_ arrest him. There must be some reason."

Squall had a ready made answer. Whatever lie he'd told Ratcliff, whatever story he'd made up. But he couldn't chase away everything _else_ surrounding Seifer, surrounding last night. The open cell, the panic, the long hours searching, even as news came pouring in on Saix, Yuffie, the stolen car, a stick-up at a gas station, three people held hostage...

A searing, sudden pain in the dead of night, cutting into that anxiety, the heart-pounding stress. He'd nearly fallen to the floor, right there in the middle of the station, in front of Ratcliff, in front of Hartford.

And in that moment, he'd wanted nothing more than for Seifer to be there, in the room with him. So he could beat the tar out of him, ask what the hell he'd been thinking...

And to make sure he hadn't done anything stupid. That he hadn't done anything dangerous. That he was okay. For both of their sakes.

He'd gotten no sleep, waiting anxiously as he was. But no more jolts came. None. He'd just have to make do with ten, and hope he found Seifer before they had to settle with nine.

 _Find Seifer_... Like there was any time. And like anything could be accomplished by finding him anyway. Probably best he _had_ gotten away, that he wasn't shackled to this sham of law and order, that he didn't have to worry about pulling anybody back from the edge before it was too late.

Must be nice, to have long since run out of fucks to give.

"He hasn't changed," Squall said at last, by way of an answer.

"For better or for worse?" he laughed humorlessly, "Or might it be that you've changed along with him, so you don't notice how different he is?"

"Is that supposed to make sense?"

"You and Almasy are a lot alike. You might remember, that's why you ended up on that job in the first place."

"Wonder which armchair psychologist thought that up."

Harvey shrugged, "Was I wrong?"

Squall wasn't going to answer. Harvey knew what he would say anyway, was perhaps counting on him to say it.

"We have matching scars," he said at last in a tone of determined aloofness.

"So you do. And you both know how to carry a grudge."

Before Squall could say anything to that, Harvey waved his arm at some point farther up the road, "Good morning, detective."

"Comish, if _this_ is your good, I don't wanna see your bad," a statuesque brunette came moving easily from what Squall knew to be the direction of the sensitive pizzeria/gas station/grease fire in waiting that was the epicenter of this particular zone of criminal activity.

"Detective Lockhart," Squall raised his eyebrows, giving Harvey a significant look, "I wasn't told you were on this case."

Tifa Lockhart shrugged flagrantly, taking a mammoth bite from a steaming breakfast bun that, judging by the greasy wax paper she'd wrapped it in, she had procured from the very establishment she was collecting evidence from.

"Ditto," she looked at Harvey, "This the finest Destiny can stir up?"

"As fine as they could get on such short notice," Harvey smirked, giving Squall a look as if to invite him into the joke, "You are aware of his reputation."

"Vividly. Is this penance?"

Harvey blinked. Tifa continued, "I guess it's more constructive than three Hail Marys and a Glory Be."

"You make it sound like you're being punished."

"Seems like _somebody_ is," she looked searchingly at Squall, "Periwinkle's _your_ guy, right?"

"No more than Yuffie's my _girl_. I'm sure you were the picture of hospitality to the both of them while they were here."

Tifa's smile curdled, "Yuffie and I go way back. She's alright."

"You don't have to tell me."

"You heard about what your boy did, right?"

"He's not my _boy_ ," Squall scowled.

"Of course not, your infatuation with trigger-happy hotheads is just a wild coincidence."

"What's the point of this?" Squall rounded on Harvey, "Because I don't think any of us has the time..."

Harvey looked mildly upset, "I should think it's obvious. I need you two on this case."

There was a long silence. Squall held his breath, and several tart rebuttals. He felt his _X_ itching, but at this point it was probably just some phantom spasm that manifested whenever he was pissed off.

"So, when does the hidden camera crew pop out?" asked Tifa, "Since we're obviously trying to sell T.V instead of getting justice."

"Getting justice, that's cute. Can't remember the last time I found any."

"Honestly," Harvey said shortly, "You two are among the best detectives in any department in this county."

"Given one's missing and another's a wanted kidnapper and stick-up artist..." began Tifa, but Harvey overrode her.

"The feds are dangerously close to taking over the Destiny case."

"That's 'cases'," said Squall, "Plural."

"These are two rogue officers and a murder suspect, two of which are confirmed as being accomplices. This is an urgent matter, I've no time to be picky and I'm sure Commissioner Ratcliff feels the same."

"That would be an understatement."

"You're both professionals. You're both intelligent. And, hard as you may both find this to believe, you are both good people. And you're about the only hope the rule of law has in this county at this point."

"God help us," said Tifa dryly.

"I've coordinated with Ratcliff," the faint smile on Harvey's lips indicated he'd perhaps enjoyed that conversation a trifle more than his east-facing counterpart had, "All the resources of the Twilight and Destiny police departments will be open to you. You'll have a case van at your disposal. There are checkpoints at all highway exits from the county."

Squall thought of Seifer's raucous dismissal of the very notion of roadblocks and suppressed a wince.

"They'll be slowed down, not stopped. It's the most we can do. This town... _all_ our towns have seen too much loss, too much confusion, too much chaos. They're owed at least _some_ answer."

"To what? A murder and a stick-up? No offense, Commissioner, but that sounds like a one detective job."

"I think," and here Harvey looked, not at Tifa, who had spoken, but at Squall, "You'll find this is somewhat bigger than that."

Squall raised his eyebrows, "Saix and Yuffie were after Axel."

"Saix and this Larxene still are," Harvey held up Yuffie's note in evidence.

"And Axel's after Riku," said Tifa, "That's what Saix seemed to think."

"And Riku's with Sora," said Squall despite himself.

Tifa looked at him sharply, "Probably. Maybe."

"You understand? Find one, you might just find all. Or be closer to it than you were."

"That's the best we can hope for, huh?"

"It's all we can hope for," Harvey looked from one of them to the other, "I've got a press conference at the department. I'd advise you to take the long way around, avoid the circus."

"Just like that, huh?" Squall asked dryly.

"You might find it deceptively simple. I wouldn't second guess."

Harvey turned on his heel, started back down the road, "Good luck, the both of you. You don't need to be told how much is riding on this."

"Wouldn't mind a visual cue all the same," grumbled Tifa, waiting until he was wisely out of hearing range, "Maybe a diagram."

Squall glared at her. She smiled sourly, shrugging, "Well, Leon..."

"Don't even."

"...looks like we're stuck together. Why don't we do each other a solid, make sure this ends real quick? I'm sure we've got better things to do with our time."

She put her hands on her hips, looking at him like she expected him to snipe right back at her. He wondered what she thought of him, who she thought he was.

At last, he nodded, "You're not kidding."

"You'll know when I am."

Squall was afraid he believed that.

* * *

The rocking of the train beneath them should have been soothing. The quiet, rhythmic swaying should have some sort of lulling, gentle quality to it. She should feel sleepy, passive, _relaxed_.

Of course, Selphie wasn't allowed to have nice things, so that put the kibosh on that. Zack, for his part, hadn't let the chaos of last night keep him from passing the hell out in the seat next to her. He swayed back and forth, head bobbing up and down, snoring unevenly.

"Tickets, please."

Selphie looked up at the attendant, noting the sympathetic, yet somewhat suspicious smile on his face. She supposed she couldn't blame him, they must look like boxcar-hopping vagrants, a hobo Bonnie and Clyde.

Selphie made a note to never tell Zack she'd just thought that up.

"Yeah, sure," she told the attendant, rummaging around in her bag for the tickets she'd bought what felt like a year ago, "Thanks," she said preemptively, handing her own to the attendant, who examined it, eyes narrowing.

"Twilight to Destiny, round trip. This is the Traverse line."

"I know, the robot voice keeps reminding me," she sighed, "Look, I paid for it with my own money. If you take that thing as evidence of _anything_ , let it be that my night didn't exactly go my way."

The attendant looked significantly at Zack. Selphie rolled her eyes, "That wasn't an invitation to the sewing circle. I don't know about you, sweetie, but I _did_ middle school."

"I need to see his ticket," he deadpanned.

"Of course you do, how stupid of me. _Zack_!" she nudged him in the side.

He muttered something indistinct, lifted his head a fraction before gravity took over and he came to rest roughly against her shoulder.

She sighed, looking at the attendant, "Give me a second."

He stood there, impatience palpable, as Selphie braced herself, made a few internal Signs of the Cross, and started feeling her way through Zack's pockets. She was sure she'd seen him put the ticket in there when they boarded the first of the four or five or however many trains they'd taken over the last evening.

"You could always cooperate with me a little," she whispered, feeling her way around his jacket, "FYI, this is just a _teensy_ bit embarrass..."

" _Ack!_ " he opened his eyes with a jolt, locked eyes with Selphie immediately and, just as quickly, reeled back, panting heavily as if he'd just been electrocuted.

"Selphie," he said rapidly.

"Zack."

"Did I...whoa. Oh my God. I'm sorry. I didn't..."

"You didn't do anything."

He looked down at her hand, still shoved considerably down into his letter jacket. She followed his gaze, then looked back up to him, solemnly withdrawing her hand.

"Your...um...your ticket," she said, indicating the attendant, at which point Zack turned a bright, garish red.

"Oh. Oh, um...yeah. Yeah, sure. Right."

He bent down, opened his backpack and retrieved the ticket. Selphie watched all of this, trying not to feel stupid.

"Thanks," the attendant took the ticket, not sounding very thankful, "Good luck to you kids."

And he was off. Selphie sighed, leaning back in her seat, "What, does he think we're homeless or something? I can't look _that_ busted. Do I look busted?"

"What? No. Of course not."

"That's sweet of you."

Zack cleared his throat, "How...how long was I out?"

"Oh, not long."

"No?"

"Six minutes?"

"Feels like forever," he rubbed the back of his neck, wincing, "Did I drool on you?"

"A few near misses. Don't sweat it."

"I feel _so_ stupid," he leaned back in his seat, groaning loudly.

" _You_ feel stupid? With _me_ right here? I don't think so."

"You're not stupid, Selphie. You just...

"I screwed everything up. I get it. Zack, maybe you're too nice to beat on me about it, but I reserve the right to beat myself up, thank you very much."

"Selphie..."

"It's okay," she said firmly, "Really, Zack. I'll figure something out. I've done it before."

Zack looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn't. They sat in silence the rest of the way, rocking back and forth, the early morning light shedding a subtle, yet weirdly inviting light into the car.

Selphie realized how tired she was. She wasn't sure how she'd managed not to flat pass out herself. Everything had happened in some frenzied blur, and now they seemed to be stuck in this glacial cool-off phase where everything before it just felt like a fever dream.

"Will you be okay?" Zack asked as they got off the train at Audley Avenue station.

"Oh, me? Sure, yeah, why not. I'm sure we'll see him at school. I can deal, I'm really good at thinking on my feet. And, really, it's all gonna smooth itself out anyway, Zack, it's cute you're worried..."

"I...I mean to go home. Like, can you...can you make it home?"

"Oh," Selphie stopped abruptly, reddening, "Um...yeah. Sure. Of course, I mean. Yeah."

"I just...I know last night was kinda...scary..."

"It was a lot," Selphie agreed, "But you don't have to take me home. Hey, if I'm lucky, nobody would've noticed was I gone."

"Really?" he asked her.

"It's one night, Zack, probably my Mom was out just as long as we were and we'll walk in the front door at the same time."

They walked on from the platform side by side, Selphie not even processing they were walking together at first. She was tired, sluggish. And, much as she tried to play it off, she found it hard to just write off last night.

But she couldn't talk about it with Zack. It wasn't fair, not to him...not to Tidus either. Hard as it was to think about Tidus.

"Thanks, Selphie," Zack said at last.

"Thanks?" she looked at him.

"For...for coming with me."

"You don't have to thank me, Zack..."

"I want to. I...I know I talked a lot last night, but I don't think I could've done this alone."

"Maybe you would've gotten somewhere if you had."

"Nah. I probably would've chickened out too," his eyes widened, "Not that I'm saying you chickened out or...or anything like that..."

"Except that I did," Selphie shrugged, "I freaked out and I kept you from your answers."

Zack considered, "Or...you freaked out and kept me from ending up like Sora," he smiled sheepishly, "Maybe I am just a chicken, but...I kinda like this way better."

"Even if you don't get your answers?"

"Cloud wanted answers," said Zack, "I don't know to which questions, but still. That's what he wanted, when he left. I don't know if he ever got them, or if he's still looking, but either way...if he changed that much trying to find out, I don't want any of it," he rolled up and down on the balls of his feet, "So thank you, Selphie."

"Any time," she said, smiling despite herself, "And Zack, about...about the other thing."

"What thing?"

"Well...you know...Tidus."

"Oh," Zack nodded, "Right."

Selphie bit her lip, struggling to organize her thoughts, "I don't want you to think..."

" _Zack!_ "

Selphie let out a short scream, stepping away from Zack so quickly she tripped, falling flat on her back on the sidewalk, which gave her a lovely and not-at-all dramatic view of the slate gray Oldsmobile that had nearly run off the curb to them, it had skidded up so quickly.

"Hey!" she protested, taking a quick inventory of her faculties to assess her distress was primarily emotional, "You wanna watch where you take that thing? _Some_ of us have futures to look forward to. Haven't the youth of this community suffered en..."

The door slammed open, then shut, an angry blur stomping down the pavement toward them.

"Oh my God," Zack said mutely.

"Oh my God is right!" she was a wiry brunette, hair twisted into a messy knot at the top of her head. Her voice was high and strained with worry. Selphie had had enough regrettable experience lately to know she must've been crying recently.

"Where _have_ you been? I've been looking all over for you, do you have any idea how worried I was..."

"So do I _not_ get an apology?" demanded Selphie, hands on her hips, "I'll have you know, a good friend of mine almost _died_ this same way, and I _really_ don't need to be reminded of that..."

"And _who_ are you, young lady?" the woman rounded on Selphie as if only seeing her for the first time.

"Young lady?" Selphie snapped, "You wanna know who _this_ young lady is?"

"Selphie..." Zack began.

" _This young lady_ is angry, miserable, depressed, hungry and needs a goddamn _nap_!"

"Selphie..."

"Selphie?" the woman looked her up and down, "Zack, I wasn't aware you had any friends by that..." she looked like she was going to say something else, but corrected herself, "...name."

With a slow realization, Selphie began to understand, "Wait..."

"Selphie, this is my Mom," his face was bright red, and he was avoiding looking at either of them in particular, "Mom, this is Selphie."

" _Mom?_ " Selphie breathed, "But...but you...you're not..."

"Oh, but never mind all that," she broke off with a sigh, "You're safe."

She swept Zack into a hug, catching him off guard. Selphie locked eyes with him over her shoulder as he gave her an apologetic, embarrassed look.

"All that's happened...you can't blame me being worried, can you?"

Zack sighed, "N-no. But Mom, it's...it's okay, really."

"It is now that you're here," she pulled away, "Come on. Let's get you home."

"Home?"

"I've spoken with the police and they'll allow it. I'm trying to arrange for some sort of escort..."

"Escort?"

"But they're understaffed, which I suppose is no surprise. Sad, though," she looked at Selphie, "What did you say your name was?"

"...Selphie."

"Selphie. You should go home too. No doubt your family's very worried."

"I've got a healthy amount of doubt," she said, smiling thinly, "But don't worry. If I was ever good at anything, it's taking a hint."

"Selphie..." Zack began.

"It's okay. Go home, get some rest. Cut school if you have to..." she looked over to his Mom, half expecting her to object, but she didn't, now rhythmically running her hand through her son's hair to his evident discomfort.

"I'll be fine."

"You sure?"

"Nope," she said with a shrug, "But I've got reason to believe," she nodded at Zack, then his mother, "Pleasure meeting you."

"I am sorry," she said, "About...my car..."

"Don't sweat it," Selphie told her, already walking away, her stomach in knots and her heart beating a dirge in her breast.

* * *

The field was lit up from end to end, the masses in the stands cheering, whoops and yells that shook the bleachers, hummed through the air. There was an electric energy, every cell of his body felt charged.

This was his battlefield, his arena. His fight. He knew what he had to do.

The ball soared through the air, a blur, a bullet, right toward _their_ wide receiver. He couldn't allow that. Didn't even have to think before he was there between them, intercepting the ball, taking it in his hands.

Yells, cheers, whoops. Somewhere, a band was playing. A laugh rose up in his lungs, a joyous laugh escaping in a thin cloud. There was nothing for it but to run. So he ran, ran like the wind, quick, effortless, hot breath pumping through him, cloud sweat on his face, the taste of iron, bitter yet delicious on his tongue.

He could do this. If there was anything he could do, it was this. Had to be.

The end zone was ahead, thirty yards, twenty, ten...

Ten. Ten. Ten. It was getting no closer, nor farther either. He kept running, pumping his legs, breath thinning. He was moving, but couldn't move. The cheers turned to jeers, then to laughs, mocking, high, cruel laughter.

Someone piled onto him from behind, knocking him to his knees. Another, then a third. He held the ball close to his chest. It was the least he could do, all he could manage.

He was crushed, buried under the weight of so many bodies. He couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't think...

 _Got to get out. Got to think...got to think of something_.

His head was splitting inside his helmet, opposite forces seeming to pull away and then come crashing violently into each other. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to punch something.

He couldn't move. He couldn't do anything.

A bang, quick, short, loud, cut into the chaos, the darkness. Everything went quiet, still. He could hear only his breath, see it rise before him in thin wisps, though it was not cold.

Another bang. Like a shot, a gunshot.

He looked up, realizing his helmet was gone, his hair sticking to his brow. He could smell something hot and stale...maybe gunpowder?

There was nobody weighing him down. Whoever they were, whatever they had wanted they were gone now. But he still had the ball in his hands, he could feel it, heavy like a stone.

Shakily, he got to his feet, looking around at the wide, dark expanse around him.

He could see no one. No sign of whoever fired that shot, nor whoever had been on the receiving end of it. Just the whistling of the wind, a dry, stale wind.

Suddenly, without warning, a humming noise. A woman, it sounded like, humming quietly. He knew the tune at once, and it made his heart stop, then rocket to life at three times its normal speed.

He had to find her. He had to.

He started forward, walking quickly, the ball still in his hands. He couldn't drop it. He knew that much. They were counting on him not to, and he couldn't just forget. He couldn't forget the game, the goal. He couldn't afford it.

There were footsteps ahead of him. Someone running. He quickened his pace. He had to catch up, he _had_ to. If only he could see, if only he knew where he was...

" _You are my sunshine/My only sunshine_..."

Her voice. Of course it was her humming, singing...who else? She must be trying to tell him something, make him feel better. She was always trying to make him feel better.

" _You make me happy/When skies are gray._ "

He began to run. He had to find her, he had to help her. If _they_ got to her first...

" _You'll never know, dear/How much I love you... Please don't take my sunshine away._ "

With a silent rapidity, the world came alive with light. Bright, multicolored light, shining down on the stark black of the floor beneath him, maybe little patterns, prisms in red, green and gold.

He looked one way, then the other, and found there were windows to his left and right, spaced about as far apart as any football field. Tall, thin windows, arches coming to a point at the top. Stained glass.

" _The other night, dear/As I lay sleeping/I dreamed I held you in my arms..._ "

There was someone standing somewhere ahead of him. Solitary and still, facing away. They were shrouded in shadow. But he knew. He _knew_ him. He had to get him, to catch him.

He began to run, and no sooner had he done that than his quarry started running as well. He had no choice but to give chase. He could run, _really_ run this time. The world seemed to have no beginning and no end, an endless stream of windows to dash past, but he knew he was gaining, he knew it.

" _When I awoke, dear/I was mistaken..._ "

He was almost on him, could make out a black jacket, leather, maybe. Could hear the thudding of boots on the floor. He reached out, grabbed for the shoulder...

" _So I hung my head/And cried._ "

He pulled at the jacket, just as another shot rang out, louder than the last, closer. He braced himself, gritted his teeth, braced for the jolt, the pain...

Nothing came. There was a jacket in his hands where the ball had been, and windows looming up before him, as if over an altar.

He was alone.

"No..." his voice came to him at last, "No, no, no..."

His legs gave way beneath him, he felt his knees cold on a smooth stone floor. The light of the stained glass bore down on him. His arms were dappled many colors, the jacket in his lap smelled like dust, like the road, like gunpowder.

It was warm, wet. He lifted his hands, and they came away red with blood.

The scream escaped him with an explosive force.

" _Sora_!" urgent, curt, "Sora!"

He opened his eyes, breathing ragged, his head feeling like it had been used for field goal practice. The world was dark again, cold, bitter. He knew where he was.

"R-Riku?" he asked.

"Sorry to disappoint."

Sora lifted his hand to the smooth, cracked concrete of the wall ahead of him, felt the thin crack he knew his erstwhile roommate was hidden behind.

"Neku? How...how long was I out?"

"Good question," was the dry response, "Maybe I'll just check my watch."

"Don't..." he panted, realizing how quickly his heart was thundering, "Don't make fun of me."

"Nah, even _I'm_ not that heartless. Yet," a short pause, "Bad dream?"

"I...I guess. It...it didn't feel like a dream, though."

"Yeah, the bad ones never do."

"What happened to me? I...I remember talking to Riku..."

"Yeah. Riku," Neku made a soft noise that Sora wasn't sure was a chuckle or just a cluck of dismissal, "What's going on _there_ , exactly?"

"Try none of your business."

"Probably not," it was _definitely_ a sardonic laugh this time, "He was pretty freaked out about your freak out."

"Freak out..." he sighed, "It happened before. In the elevator..." he put his hand over the crack, again trying to imagine Neku's face beyond it, watching him, "Why?"

"You're asking me?"

"There's no one else _to_ ask," he sighed, "Is Riku okay? What did they do to him?"

"He's probably better off than us, that's all I can tell you."

Sora let out a sigh, feeling his heart slowly began to relax, though his ribs were aching from all the pressure. His hands were dry. Not clean. He was pretty sure none of him was clean. But there was no blood, no stink of cordite, no ringing tones of a gunshot reverberating in his ears.

Yet, somehow, he could still hear his mother's voice, singing to him softly, sweetly, the song he'd always been so embarrassed by. If he closed his eyes, made the darkness around him more complete than it already was, he could almost feel her fingers through his hair.

"I can't stay here," he said at last.

"Really? But it's _so_ nice."

"There's got to be a way out. We can't...we can't just be _trapped_ here."

"Man, I've been here a _hell_ of a lot longer than you. If there was a way out don't you think I would've found it by now?"

But there was a hesitation in the way he said it. A pause. Sora seized on it, "There _is_ something. You know it. Or maybe...maybe it's just an idea. Hey, I'm...I'm not the brightest bulb, man, but if you've got an idea, I could help. We...we ca figure something out, right?"

It was a while before Neku said anything. Sora began to suspect he was just toying with him now, just to avoid having to answer.

But, at last, he said, "Well...now that you're here...maybe."

Just like that, Sora felt a huge, sweeping relief cross over him, "Maybe?"

"Can't promise you any better than that."

"You kidding? Man, I can _work_ with maybe," he laughed, a tired but true, sincere laugh, "If I can work with _anything_ , it's 'maybe'."

 **A/N:** I was gonna throw a trippy dream sequence at you all eventually. I couldn't keep on talking about _Twin Peaks_ if I didn't. Expect Chapter 29 next Friday.

Until then...


	29. Running Hot, Staying Cold

Chapter 29, Running Hot, Staying Cold

 **A/N** : Things begin picking up again this chapter. I'm very pleased with how the next few turned out, but to reveal any more would spoil the fun. So...enjoy!

* * *

She didn't have to think what to draw or how to draw it. Images and concepts came into her mind fully formed, or at least fully suggested. Her hands did the rest. Sometimes she lost track of the time, spending whole hours bent over her sketchpad, lost in a black and white world of her own making.

Namine did wish she could spring for color, though. Some pastels, crayons at the very least. But she didn't fancy bothering her mother, who was still so set on getting her out of this hospital.

"Don't know how much longer they expect us to wait," she'd remarked this morning, pacing with a surprising rapidity for one her age, "They've learned all there is to know, which isn't very much."

"Then maybe there's more they _don't_ know," Namine had told her gently, "And they're trying to find out."

She'd looked at her for a long time in silence, her lined mouth curving into a frown, "That's the trouble. They don't know. There's no way to know."

All very well for _her_ to say. With every tacit denial, ever explicit refusal to explain anything, anything at all, Namine got the impression her mother knew more than she was ever going to let on.

Did she really think her so easily placated? Surely that well-intentioned Selphie had already told her all Namine knew, even if Xemnas hadn't.

Xemnas... A lone familiar face in this sea of strangeness. His appearance suggested as much as it left obscure. It almost felt like he'd never come to visit her at all, she'd only imagined it.

Still, she kept drawing. It was all she could do. And the pictures _were_ comforting. Not so much in what they formed, but the mere act of drawing them soothed her, reassured her. Things felt real, physical before her.

So much of this world still felt false, pale, illusory.

"This is the room?" asked a smooth female voice.

"The very one," the easy accented drawl of her doctor, Facilier, "I warn you, though. She has moments of vagueness. You will be lucky to see her awake, and then luckier still if she speaks to you."

"I'll take my chances."

Namine looked up cautiously as her two visitors appeared in the doorway, "I'm awake," she said somewhat apologetically, "I haven't really been sleepy."

Facilier didn't appear particularly impressed, but the woman next to him stood rooted in place, face alight with a quiet, warm awe.

"I...I'm so sorry," she said eventually, pushing a lock of loose chestnut hair behind one ear, "I...I'm sure you've had enough of people staring at you. I...I just..."

And Namine realized, her heart going into her throat, "Lucrecia?"

She nodded, big brown eyes filling with tears, "You remember me?"

"You still have really nice hair," Namine smiled a watery smile, laughing despite herself.

"Please, I haven't combed it since Colorado State," she reached up to adjust the thin-framed reading glasses on the bridge of her nose, "I...I'm sorry, I'm...I'm just having trouble believing...any of this."

"You're not the only one."

"Dr. Fair has taken a particular interest in your case," said Facilier in his syrupy, genial voice.

"I've petitioned the board to be allowed to propose treatment," said Lucrecia at length, "To...determine what exactly happened to you."

"Your fellowship with the hospital no doubt eases that along, yes?" It was hard to tell if Facilier was just pointing out a fact or being resentful. In any case, he nodded politely at Namine, "I will leave you two. I'm sure you have much to talk about."

With another tip of his inexplicable hat, he excused himself from the room.

"He doesn't seem to like you very much," said Namine.

"No," Lucrecia agreed, "I'm sure he's not the only one, either. Plenty of decent people at this place still think I'm more huckster than healer," she took the chair Amphitrite was accustomed to sitting in, pulling it closer to the bed.

"So...it's _Dr. Fair_ now?" Namine prompted, "Seems there's a story behind that. Both of them."

"Well...you know I was working for my PhD."

"But you _got_ it?"

"Wasn't easy. But...yes, I did. I even had a teaching post at Radiant Community for a hot second."

"Not anymore?"

Lucrecia shook her head, sighing, "Biochem doesn't really sell the desks it used to. I work, though. There's always schools somewhere that need a lecturer, guest professor, things like that. I move around a lot."

"Must be lonely."

Lucrecia considered, toying with her hands in her lap. Namine looked that way, and saw the glimmer of gold on one finger. Lucrecia must have noticed where her attention went, holding up her hand to twist the ring around.

"It's kind of funny how it worked out, really...we met in grief counseling."

"Mr. Fair?"

She smiled, "I didn't expect it, not really. Everything still felt so...so raw. I didn't think I was ever going to _truly_ be over it," her voice tightened, "I'm still not. But...but Pax never minded. I think we both understood we'd always be incomplete somehow, so..."

"Why not be incomplete together? I think that's very sweet."

"You would," but she was smiling, "And we were happy together. Very much."

Namine frowned, "Were?"

Lucrecia nodded, "It's been a few years now. Sometimes it feels like another life," she looked up at Namine suddenly, "Oh...I'm sorry, that...that wasn't the best choice of words."

"Oh please," she shook her head, "It's not the same at all. You've...you've had a very full life. I just...skipped all that."

"Now you're making me feel old," but she was smiling, "So...you know how much time it's been? Amphitrite...your mother...she wasn't very clear about that."

"I think she must know I know. But she seems to have decided not to talk about it."

"I'd say she was doing the right thing, trying to keep you from shock."

"Luce, if I was going to go into shock I would've a while ago."

Lucrecia nodded as if in concession, "Even so. Mother's instincts. I can't blame her."

She paused, as if realizing what she'd said. Two spots of light rosy color came into her cheeks and she went back to toying around with her hair.

"So...he's alright, then?" Namine asked, brightening up, "I hadn't even thought about him. 21 years, he must be...22? 23?"

Lucrecia's smile faded, "23. But...it's complicated."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Lucrecia. I...I wouldn't have asked. I..."

"You've every right to ask, Namine," she leaned back in her seat, "He grew up. Healthy, strong. Smart. Good at sports."

"Football?"

Lucrecia nodded, a note of tears entering her tone, "He was good. But...I should've handled things differently. There were things I should've made sure of, things...things I should've told him."

"So he doesn't..."

"I thought it was the right thing to do. You have to understand, Nami, he...he was a boy. My son. A good kid, a...a _normal_ kid. What would either of us have gained from going over all of that now? That's how I justified it to myself, at least."

"Did...did Pax know?"

"I told him. He understood, that was just his way. He got along with everyone like that. And he understood my reasons for keeping it quiet. But I did know he had to know...we were planning a family of our own, and..." she stopped again, "That's right. We... _I_ have another son."

"Really?" Namine brightened.

"Zack. He's...he's about your age."

Namine cocked an eyebrow and they laughed together.

"I'd love to meet him."

"He takes more after me," Lucrecia nodded, "That's what they tell me, that is. He's kind, sweet. And strong... _so_ strong. I'm gone so often, and...and he takes care of so much on his own."

"I wonder where he might've gotten that strength from?" Namine asked, smiling.

Lucrecia shook her head, "I'm not that strong."

"We must have very different memories. This might not mean much, but mine are still pretty fresh, all things considered."

"A lot has happened, Namine," she said haltingly, "And the choices I made then, thinking I was doing the right thing..." she lowered her head, tears sparkling on her cheeks, "I knew there would be consequences, and I ignored them, and now..."

Namine reached forward and placed her hand on Lucrecia's arm. Gradually, her sobs lessened, and she let out a long, hollow breath.

"I just..." Lucrecia said at length, "I wish I'd listened to you, back then."

"Really?" Namine reddened, "Because, sitting here, talking with you...I can't help but wonder if I was right at all. I was just a kid. I still am."

Lucrecia faltered, "You always knew better than the rest of us."

"That doesn't mean I can't be wrong. Luce, whatever happened, whatever came of it...you have your son."

"My son..." Lucrecia shook her head, dabbing at her eyes, "God help me."

She said nothing after that, tears glimmering on her face. Namine kept her hand over hers, and they sat together in silence, Namine feeling tears of her own rising to her lashes for reasons she both understood and could not explain.

* * *

"There has _got_ to be some mistake!"

Trepe surveyed her with an exhausted indifference over the congealed, steaming mass of microwave stir fry that passed for a high school teacher's lunch.

"Yes, Selphie,there _is_ a mistake. Several. You'll note all the spots where I wrote corrections in the margins."

Selphie snatched the quiz from the desk, waving it around like a banner, "It's a _D_!"

"A D+, actually. Surely you at least recognize the plus sign?"

"Listen, Ms. Trepe," Selphie took a breath to compose herself, looking around the otherwise deserted math room, "There's got to be _something_ you can do."

"There is something. I do it every day in periods three and five, depending on schedule mandates. If you'd like a peer tutor..."

"Don't patronize me!"

"Selphie, clearly you've never heard yourself speak. If I were feeling any more patronized, I might just turn that plus into a minus," she raised her eyebrows, "That would be a D-."

"I _know how to subtract things!_ "

Trepe smiled thinly as Selphie realized what she'd said. She groaned, "Look, I...I'm not trying to be mean."

"It comes naturally, then?"

"I've had a rough week."

For the first time, Trepe showed signs of something vaguely approximating compassion. She set the plastic fork she was eating with down, letting out a long sigh.

"I'm sure this whole thing with Kairi and Sora has been stressful. Then that...incident at Zack Fair's apartment..."

"Please, I relive this stuff every ten minutes as it is, we can cut the recaps."

"Are you in trouble, Selphie?"

"W-what?"

"You can tell me if you are. There's help for you here, if you need it."

Selphie fidgeted, anxious, "I...I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's not like you get straight As in my class, Selphie, but a D..."

"I thought it was a D+!"

"...that's a bit extreme even for you. And then there was that fight with Zack and Tidus, and that's not even getting started on the murder scene you walked in on..."

"This really has nothing to do with anything, so I think I'll be go..."

"Is it Zack?" she asked abruptly, "Or Tidus?"

Selphie spluttered, "Wha...I don't... _what_?"

"Selphie, you don't owe either of them anything. If they're making you feel caught up between them, you can walk away whenever..."

"I'm sorry, what _the hell_ do you think is going on here?"

"Selphie, you literally came between them during that fight, you've been going everywhere with them since Sora and Kairi went missing..."

"Oh, what a detective! Do they teach deductive reasoning in those lurid sex books you like so much?"

Trepe's face went stone, "They are Harlequin novels."

"They're _stupid_ and you are wrong," Selphie shouldered her bookbag, "Lady, there are a _thousand_ things wrong with my life right now, but God help me, boys aren't one of them."

She turned on her heel, snatching her D+ up from the desk before Trepe could get any second thoughts.

She stormed down the hall, not looking back, knowing if she did her legs would spontaneously give way from beneath her and she'd be as good as catatonic.

Again, people watched her pass. She knew they were looking, could feel their eyes on her. The feeling to throw something into the gaggle had never been more tempting. But apparently she was getting to be notorious around here, and the last thing she needed was to rack up any undue 'she's come undone' points.

"Hey! Selphie!"

 _Oh,_ no _ma'am_.

She kept walking, picking up her pace. Behind her, footsteps moved more rapidly across the floor, "Selphie! I gotta tell you something."

She kept walking.

"Selphie! I know you don't wanna..."

"Oh, I don't _wanna_?" she spun on her heel to face Irvine, D+ held against her chest with both arms like it was the most precious thing in the world to her, though really holding onto it was just insurance against the spontaneous impulse to knock the cowboy hat off this idiot's head.

"Please, Irvine, tell me all about what I _don't_ want to do. You know how much I value your opinion."

Irvine shifted from foot to foot, looking up and down the hall, "Look, Selphie, I...I know I'm the _last_ guy you want to hear anything from..."

"Knowing the usual roster of guys I bother myself with, you must be aware what an exclusive club that is."

He sighed toying with the lapels of his duster, "Can we go someplace a bit more private?"

"I don't want any cigarettes."

"I'm serious..."

"I don't want grass either."

"I'm not trying to sell you drugs!"

Two randos from the A.V club gave them a look as they passed. Selphie twiddled her fingers at them, hoping the least thought that popped into their heads was that she'd just found some other high school boy trope to sate her sads.

"Selphie, do you think I'd be bothering you if this weren't important?"

"Can't remember a time you bothered me about something that _was_ important."

But he didn't seem likely to let up any time soon, so Selphie relented with a sigh, "Fine. Lead the way. I have permission to call you a dork and run the other way at the first red flag."

"Yeah, got it," but he didn't sound his usual smart ass stuff about that, hastening down the hall.

Before Selphie could think to ask him where they were supposed to be going, they arrived. Selphie wrinkled her nose, "The ladies' room?"

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"We have a spot now? How adorable," she took a quick look at herself in the nearest mirror and tried not to betray excess disgust with how exhausted she looked. She'd had to race from home (where, as she'd suspected, her mother was still sleeping off _several_ Jack and Cokes, and her father had presumably been at the office since about this time yesterday) to homeroom without a second to pause. Her hair was uncombed, her makeup from yesterday still on her face, and that was nothing to her clothes. She'd changed hastily, not taking too much time for coordination. Every step in _these_ leggings with _this_ sweater filled her with a loathsome dread.

"This better be good, Irvine."

"It's not."

Selphie rolled her eyes, "You're hilarious. In a more civilized time, they would've put you in technicolor long johns and made you tell jokes while they fed Christians to lions."

"You think I'm funny?"

"I think I'm wasting my time."

"Well, I'm not trying to be."

"Funny or a time waster?"

"It's about last night," he said it abruptly, "Remember...we ran into each other on the train?"

"How could I forget?" but Selphie couldn't play it entirely off. She felt chills on her arm, going along her back, "Look, you want an explanation, quiz Zack. Better yet, don't. He's suffered enough, and I'm pretty sure his mom thinks he's turned into a sex fiend while she was gone."

Irvine looked like he wanted to ask something to that, but he didn't, instead rummaging around in his duster, "Fuck."

"Same," she replied flatly.

"Want a smoke?" he held out a pack of Camels, "For real."

"Smoking in the bathroom, now? Wow, this finally feels like high school. No, I'm not smoking."

"Can't mess up your pipes, huh?"

"Let's go with that."

In any case Irvine lit his own cigarette, taking a short, nervous drag on it, "I'm just...I'm wired, you know? I didn't even think you were gonna be here today..."

"And miss out on these little encounters? Not a chance."

"But you got back all right? You and Zack?"

"If sleeping in a train station for three hours and almost missing a 5:30 express back home counts as 'all right', then yeah, we're fine."

Irvine looked placated, but only for a moment, "And...and Tidus?"

"Tidus?" she crossed her arms, " _Really?_ "

"Look, I...I get that you and him are, like..."

"We're not _like_ anything. That's the problem. Nobody knows _what_ we are and, frankly, I'm sick of wasting time figuring it out."

"So...so you're not..."

"I'm _not_ 'with' Tidus. I am not 'with' anybody. I am 'with' Selphie. It's a very novel concept, but so wonderful and fancy free! For example, I cannot wait to get home, make a fruit salad, sleep forever and, when that's all done, learn all about the miracle..." she lifted up her quiz, shredding it to pieces with every word, "of... _slope...and...ordered...pairs_!"

She broke off, breathing heavily,"Any more questions, Irvine?"

He looked at her, mouth hanging open in an expression of muted terror. At last he said, "Are...are you sure you don't want a smoke?"

Selphie let out a scream of rage, turning on her heel, but Irvine ran ahead of her, coming between her and the door.

"Selphie, please, I...I get you're probably really sick of me. And, like, guys in general."

"You more than most, but yeah."

"But just let me say what I need to say. So...so you and Tidus aren't getting on or...or whatever..."

"Or whatever. Irvine, if you're trying to take advantage of the vacancy, I've gotta give you credit, you're even slimier than I ever gave you credit for."

"We were friends, Selph! D'ya really think I'd do that to you?"

"You've only been trying since second grade."

To his credit, he at least didn't deny that, "Look, it's...it's no secret I think Tidus is a giant prick."

"Self absorbed, arrogant, an emotional stillbirth that wouldn't know sincerity if they got drunk on $17 vodka and he danced all over its toes, take your pick." she was on a roll now, taking a big breath and adding, "You know what I've _realized_ , Irvine?"

"What?" he asked, sounding frightened, which only further emboldened her.

"I am 17, pretty, of not-inconsiderable means. Sure, long division still gives me headaches, but who _needs_ long division? Calculators exist. As far as life skills, I'm plucky, resourceful, speak my mind and, not to get ahead of myself, but I can _feel_ my bullshit intolerance rising by the minute. I don't need Tidus, I don't need boys, maybe boys don't need me. Maybe none of us need each other, and that's just the best way to do it because other people will _destroy_ you, and..."

"Selphie..."

"Give me that!" and she snatched his cigarette from his hand, taking a short puff and quickly regretting it, erupting into a coughing fit.

"You do this _every_ day?" she stared at him.

"Not...not every day."

"God bless," she said dryly, handing the cigarette back to him.

"My Dad smoked every day."

"I remember that," she said faintly, leaning against the sink, tasting tar, feeling it in her nostrils, "Didn't he get lung cancer?"

"Yep," he leaned against the sink beside her.

It was a long time before he spoke up again, "I'm sorry I mentioned Tidus."

"Forget it," she told him, waving her hand dismissively, "Not your fault we've been fused at the hip this whole week."

"Yeah," he said in a manner probably would've gotten Selphie riled up if she was in any mood to pretend at umbrage.

"I feel really stupid, if anything. Letting...letting Tidus and me _happen_ at all. He tried to make it off like...like I was acting out because of all that's happened. But, whoa there, genius that he is, he missed the whole bit that _if_ that were true, that would make him just as much of a stupid decision as _anything_ connected to..."

"Wait."

"Wait what?"

Irvine mopped anxiously at his brow, "Shit, I...I forgot."

"Forgot what?"

"The reason I wanted to talk to you..."

A horrible, shrill ringing cut into his words. Selphie let out a short cry, stepping back as bright white lights began flashing in the hall outside. In the very next second, sprinklers in the ceiling above opened up, raining cold water down on the both of them.

"You _drip_ , you set off the smoke alarm!" Selphie screeched, throwing her hands up over her already soaked hair.

"That's not important!" Irvine told her, already stamping his cigarette out on the slick tiled floor, water cascading from the brim of his hat.

"Easy for you to say! This sweater is _cashmere_!"

"Where?"

"It's a _fabric_!"

"Tidus!" Irvine spoke over her, "Selphie, it's Tidus."

"I already told you, I am _done_ talking about..."

"He's gone, Selph," he told her flatly.

It took her a while to understand, sputtering, "What...what do you... _Gone_?"

Irvine nodded grimly, "They took him."

* * *

The hospital was beginning to feel more familiar to Celeste now, for better or worse. The uncomfortable lurch she'd had passing into the lobby these last few times had by now abated. She felt almost normal, making her way across the sterile tile floor, listening to the indistinct hum of voices on intercom speakers, moving past masses of people in various stages of nervousness, exhaustion, relief and despair.

If she felt anything out of the ordinary, it was this lingering feeling of displacement. She didn't belong here. This wasn't her pain to bear.

But she couldn't go to work, and she couldn't stay home, not without driving herself slowly mad. And she felt she at least owed it to Amphitrite to make sure she was still sane too.

 _But it's more than that,_ a tiny, but shrewder voice in her head pointed out, _You know it. Don't bother hiding it._

Namine. All this talk about who she was and not nearly enough about where she'd _come_ from. What she'd seen, why she'd left. Who she'd met.

Celeste didn't dare think about it. To dwell too long would be to give way to hope, and hope was too dangerous a luxury, never mind the extra helping of fear that it brought with it.

Because if Namine _had_ seen something, if she _did_ know something...something terrible must have been done to ensure she forget about it. And that only raised even more unsettling questions about those she would have left behind.

"Good afternoon," Celeste greeted the woman at the reception desk.

She was a stout, toad-like creature. Celeste's mother had worn her hair a similar way, but it had never looked quite so fake. She surveyed Celeste through tiny, buggy eyes, peering over the lenses of a pair of glasses that had been liberally attacked with rhinestones.

"What's wrong with you?" she growled from some place considerably farther south than her navel.

"What...what's wrong with... I'm sorry?"

"You. What's wrong with you?" her expression didn't change, but Celeste figured out what she was talking about.

"Oh! Oh, no, I'm...I'm not sick. I'm...I'm visiting."

The woman didn't look very convinced. Celeste, suddenly self-conscious, wondered how close to death she must look at this point.

Still, she took hold of the clipboard in front of her with one stubby, magenta nail tipped hand, turning it to face her, "Where?"

"Radiology," Celeste got a pen from her purse, leaning forward toward the pad.

"Mystery Girl?" the receptionist guessed flatly.

"Yes, actual..."

The clipboard was turned away from her at once, pulled back across the desk. Taken aback, Celeste could do nothing but blink, asked in a muted voice, "I...I don't understand."

"No visitors. Doctor's orders."

Celeste couldn't help but bristle, "Since when?"

"I didn't mark my calendar."

"But I...I went to see her mother just yesterday, she never mentioned..."

"Doctor's. Orders."

Celeste sighed, "Is she here? Amphitrite?"

"Gesundheit."

"Her _mother_ ," Celeste sounded out the word, feeling half a second of embarrassment for resorting to 'pissed off Mommy' tactics, "She's a friend of mine, and I know for a fact she's practically sleeping in that room now."

Figuring she could afford to win any points she could scrounge up, Celeste held up the grocery bag in her other hand, "I brought her some extra clothes. And...and food."

"Food?" as if she'd never heard of the word before, which would've been quite a thing to claim, looking at her.

"Granola bars. Some sandwiches."

"Sandwiches?"

"Yes."

"Got some PB&J in there? Cut the crust off yourself?"

Clearly this was supposed to be some cruel joke, meant to disarm her. Not that the woman's expression had changed from 'collapsed jello mold' since Celeste had arrived here, but she could read _this_ much. Celeste gritted her teeth, "Tuna salad. With olives and...and scallions. I make it all the time. For...for my son's practices."

The woman didn't seem particularly interested. Celeste rolled her eyes, "I'm sure Amphitrite won't mind. Knowing her, she's forgotten all about food."

The receptionist stared at her for what seemed like forever. At last, her big, scarlet lips opened wide, as if to make some grand pronouncement...

"No. Visitors."

Celeste lunged forward onto the desk, fire in her lungs and a hurricane whirling in her brain, "Why? Huh? Can you tell me that? _Why_?" she spoke rapid-fire, words shooting from her lips with the force and thoughtlessness of bullets from an automatic, "Why is it that, whenever I even _think_ about getting answers, something's _always_ got to pop up to stop me? Why _is_ that? I'm a very simple woman. I pay my rent, I work six days a week, I take care of my son... _dammit_ I take _care_ of my son. Sure, I'm not the brightest woman around, sure, I'm no fun at parties, you'd probably pick me last for Scrabble and my singing voice isn't as good as it used to be, but for the _love of God_ all I want are some _answers_! Isn't that the least any of us deserve? Answers to our questions. Not even big philosophical questions like...like ' _Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is the_ meaning _of it all?_ ' No, just ordinary, sensible questions that need answers. Like ' _what the hell has happened to my son and what can I do to save him_ '?"

She broke off, hyperventilating, short pained breaths entering and escaping her lungs in protracted, pained bursts. There were hot tears sticking to her face, and sweat matting her brow. She had the sickly realization that things had stopped happening around her, that she was being stared at.

Balefully, she lifted watery eyes to the receptionist, "Please. I...I don't want to make any trouble. I just...I _need_ some answers. Just a few minutes. I...I'm desperate."

The woman leaned forward toward her, their faces separated by inches, "No. Visitors."

Celeste screamed at her, reaching forward with boys hands, aiming to grab that fat neck, if she could even find it, just dig her nails into that papery, gross flesh and watch those hideous, black eyes pop out of their sockets...

"Whoa there," she felt hands on her own body, not rough, but firm, pulling her back just short of seizing the old woman, "Tempting as it is, I'd hate to think of anyone going to prison on Roz's account."

It was a smooth voice, deep and rich. Celeste found herself inexplicably, immediately calmed. She panted, feeling her heart slowly begin to slow down. There were hands on her shoulders: big, firm hands with olive skin. A scent hung in the air of fine, fresh cologne. A scent that lingered, like leather and flowers, strong, but not overpowering.

She felt like a fool at once. With a shaking hand, she brushed some hair from her forehead, nodding as she stepped a bit away from her rescuer, "O-of course. I'm sorry," she looked over at the receptionist, Roz, "Really, I am."

The woman didn't even blink, making a tiny noise of assent deep in her throat.

"Thank you," Celeste next addressed the man behind her, turning to face him, "I...I don't know what came over me. I...I've just had so much on my..."

She saw his face, a foot or so above her. Tall, shoulders squared, framed in an immaculately tailored black coat over what must be a just-as-flawless suit. Bright silver hair cascaded down his back, unruly yet weirdly restrained. He was nothing but restraint, even his polite smile belying some practiced air of calm. She felt her breath regulate, her own shoulders relax.

"...mind," she finished in a husk of a voice.

"Not surprising, I'm sure. You've had quite an ordeal."

Celeste blinked, "An...an or..." she broke off, "Oh. Yes. Well..."

"I hope I haven't presumed. I couldn't help but overhear your...disagreement with our fateful gatekeeper. You're with the mystery girl."

"Well...not quite 'with'. I'm...I'm friends with her mother," she picked up her grocery bag from where she'd dropped it, "I...brought her some food."

The man took a look inside, cocking an eyebrow, "Tuna fish?"

"She'd probably be insulted by the thought, but I only really cook for my son and he's not much of a food critic..."

"Your son?"

His eyes searched her. They were strange eyes: a deep brown, hints of amber and, maybe it was just the harsh light of the hospital lobby, but there was something gold to them too.

"Yeah, my...my son."

"I'm sorry," he nodded, sounding actually apologetic, "I don't mean to pry. It's only I can't help but think..."

"You thought right," Celeste finished for him, "He's the boy you've heard about. Sora."

"Sora..." he repeated the name softly, barely a breath, "You must be very worried about him."

Celeste nodded and, stupidly, felt tears beginning to well in her eyes again. She shook her head, as if this gesture in itself was enough to banish them.

"I am. It's just...it's been a lot to juggle."

"And still you look after your friend," he indicated the grocery bag, "That's very admirable. One might go so far as to say 'maternal'."

"It's just...it's all I know how to be," she shrugged.

"There are worse things to be," he said shortly, "And I'm sure worse people than you have gotten past this desk."

Celeste scoffed, but he'd already walked past her to the desk, "Roz, let this woman see her friend. She is, as I think we can both attest, entirely harmless."

"Entirely?" one stubby hand went for half a second to the mysterious region beneath her enormous chin and above the collar of her floral-patterned blouse where her neck must be hidden.

"I am sorry. I...I didn't mean to...to do anything to you. I'm just..."

"You mentioned something about a new chair, I think?" the man prompted, "More lumbar support."

"And an emergency brake."

"Emergency..." Celeste began, confused.

"That's well taken care of. I'll be sure to make a note on my next check to H.R."

Roz's face remained stagnant as ever, but she sounded mildly more pleased than before when she said, "Fine. Straight upstairs."

"Oh, thank you," Celeste breathed, turning to the man, "And...thank you. Really, it was...very kind. If there's anything..."

"Certainly not. Go, see your friend. It's the very least I can do."

"Well...thank you all the same, doctor..." she trailed off, "I...I don't even know your name."

"You don't and I'm not. Not a doctor."

"Oh. I just...the way you talked to her..."

"I suppose if doctors ran the hospitals they might run just a little smoother. No, I merely sit on the board of directors."

Celeste nodded, "There...there _is_ something familiar about you. I don't know, I guess I thought I saw you around here..."

"You read the business section?"

Celeste laughed, "I...I skim it."

"I seem to recall they profiled me for a puff piece or other over the summer."

Celeste thought for a moment, the realization at last coming to her, " _X_ -Corp! You're...you're the CEO."

"You've heard of us, then?"

She reddened, "I...I have one of your smoke alarms."

"Always a delight to meet a loyal customer," he extended a hand to her, "It was a true pleasure..."

"Celeste," she finished for him, shaking his hand, taken aback by how even this was gentle despite the intimidating appearance of force it had about it.

"Xemnas," he told her, "I can't stand formalities."

He took a step back from her, "Enjoy your visit."

"I will try," she told him, "Thanks again."

He nodded, "I hope things turn out well for you."

Celeste thought of what to say to that, but he'd already disappeared into the masses and out into the world.

"Yeah," she said softly, watching him go, "So do I."

* * *

The grass was rough, yet cool against his skin, the night breeze refreshing as it was harsh. He was winded, every limb strung out, worn. He'd been chewed up by the road and spit back out again.

When he spoke, his words hurt him, like clubs attacked his ribs from within, "Well...could be worse."

Next to him, Saix rolled his eyes, "You would say that."

Axel turned to him, lying beside him on the roadside, "Could be dead."

And Saix smiled, eyes bright, as he lifted his head only enough to glimpse both their bikes, wiped out to one side and the other of them, "Yeah...guess we could be."

"And even if we _did_ die..."

"Aw, c'mon..."

"There's worse ways to die."

"I've heard enough graphic descriptions of motorcycle wipe-outs from you to _seriously_ question that, Axel."

"Maybe..." he turned to Saix and grinned, "Yeah, it'd be pretty shitty way to go."

"Exactly," Saix nodded.

"But there's no better company," Axel grinned at him, "Or are you sick of me?"

And Saix just laughed, turning away from him. They looked up at the moon together, backs to the road, eyes on the sky, laughing like a pair of dumb kids.

That's all they were. Dumb kids.

Axel felt hot air flood his lungs with a forceful punch. He shuddered to back to life, eyes shooting open. He couldn't make out anything, only a face bearing down on him. Another punch in his gut, and another, another.

" _You_!" a hoarse, angry voice, single word expletives breaking into the chain of blows, "You son of a bitch!"

Axel's first thought was that this was all part of the dream. Now he was relieving some tussle in which he'd been vastly overpowered. He was sure that had happened at least once, since buried as traumatic memories are.

Or maybe he was just waking _up_ from the dream, which wasn't just that whole bit on the road but _everything_ that had happened the last few days. Maybe he'd sustained mortal injuries running Riku's precious Skippy off the road and all of this with coming home and ending up under and over Larxene and losing Dem and infiltrating the haunted house and meeting Roxas was all just some wild fevered hallucination, a dying dream...

"All your _fault_! All your fault, you son of a bitch, _you_ did this!"

A face began to come into focus: blue eyes, sandy hair, tanned face...

"Rox...?" he began, but was cut off by a sucker to the gut, sending him back into the wall. The world seemed to sway beneath him as he struggled to collect himself, to hold steady, to cling to whatever sad scrap could be said to remain of his dignity.

It wasn't Roxas, Axel realized with a pang of relief and another of stupidity for even believing that for a second. For one thing, Roxas didn't have a tan, which made sense given he'd only just been defrosted. For another, Roxas was quick on his feet and everything, but Axel was pretty sure he couldn't pack _that_ kinda punch. Much less in quick succession.

No, he'd just had the shit beaten out of him by _another_ random teenager.

 _You're getting too old for this_ , he thought wryly, unable to give into the self-deprecation as strongly as he was accustomed.

"Yo," he waved at the kid, wincing, "Name's Axel, nice to meet you."

"I _know_ who you are."

"I got the impression," he put a hand gingerly to his gut, flinching at the soreness there, "I didn't, like, steal your tires or something, right? Break into your house?"

"You think this is a _joke_ , or something?"

"I didn't tempt your girlfriend away from you, did I? That's been known to happen. Scout's honor, even if she left you, she never met me. You're, what, 12? That would just be _totally_ against my..."

His fist went flying again, right into Axel's mouth. He had enough energy this time to fight back, however, swinging with his other arm to connect with this kid's stomach.

"Could you give it a rest?" he demanded, only to be quite promptly kicked in the shin. He let out a string of barely coherent cuss words.

"You and your stupid red Corvette...like, why do you even _need_ a Corvette, you've got a fucking _bike_ , and then you go and you almost _kill_ him and you lose us _everything_ and you lose _him_!"

" _That's_ what this is ab..." he couldn't finish, forced to duck another blow. He caught the kid's arm as he attempted it, wresting it behind his back.

"Let go!" the kid demanded, writhing madly.

"Not till you stop this amateur bar fight bullshit. Listen, I'm sorry about your friend. Really. Not my finest hour. But you wanna talk about car accidents? I'm _pretty_ sure I was in a worse one. Unless that's all in my head which, who knows, it could be. The hell do I know? But, point is, I've got _nothing_ to do with your friend disappearing and, at the moment, I've got a couple more pressing con..."

" _Axel_?"

His blood ran cold. Slowly, he looked past the kid to the figure leaning against the opposite wall, gawking at him from under an ill-fitting skullcap.

"Seifer."

"The one and only," Seifer said dryly, crossing his arms, "What the hell are you even..."

Axel pushed the kid aside, lunging to seize Seifer by the front of his grungy teeshirt, proceeding to pummel him with abandon.

"Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the kid, sounding at least partially relieved to have been relegated to Greek chorus.

"Axel...Axel, for fuck's sake..."

"Thought you were smart, huh? Using me to get Riku out."

"What are you..."

Axel punched him in the face, "You think I haven't been thinking about it? Man, I've had nothing _but_ time."

" _You_ came to me!"

"And you're the only other one who knew I was getting Riku. 'Cept Vivi, and if you're about to tell me Vivi was behind that fucking mess in that tunnel, here's some advice: _Don't._ "

He punched Seifer in the face, feeling a short but powerful twinge of pleasure as he writhed in his arms.

"Axel..." he rasped, spitting blood, "Don't push it."

" _Me?_ You're telling _me_ not to push it? Dude, have you even _met_ me?"

He threw Seifer against the wall. No sooner had he done this then the entire floor beneath them pitched sharply in the same direction.

Before Axel could even muster up the air to scream, he had fallen right next to Seifer, next to a mercifully thick, but grimy window. In another second, the kid had fallen on top of the both of them with a rather undignified ' _oomph_!' There was a fourth thud as well, to Axel's right.

"Roxas?" he breathed, looking the silent, still figure of his friend lying against the glass next to him.

Roxas said nothing. His eyes weren't closed, merely hanging partly open, as if he were stuck somewhere between sleeping and waking. He didn't even move when Axel spoke.

Wordlessly, he turned back to the glass beneath him, and felt his heart practically fall from his gaping mouth.

Pine trees, rich mossy earth, huge slabs of granite. A pleasant mountain landscape. Several hundred feet below them.

Axel let out a scream, backpedaling on hands and knees. The creaky metal box they were all trapped in rocked back, sending all four bodies rattling and rumbling around. Above them, he could hear the noise of cables creaking.

"Got that out of your system, goosefuck?" breathed Seifer.

The kid mouthed 'goosefuck' with an expression of intense confusion on his face, but Axel paid barely any mind, struggling for words.

"We...we're..." he gestured wildly around them, "We're in a fucking _ski lift_?"

Seifer shrugged, "Looks that way, don't it?"

"I...I don't..." he looked from Seifer, to the kid, to Roxas, who had now slumped against the opposite wall, head lolling on his shoulder, still and silent as a wax figure, " _Why?_ "

"Damn good question," said the kid, moving to sit in a corner and assuming a very pouty posture.

"Who is this guy?" Axel asked Seifer, "Wasn't aware we were recruiting off Laguna Beach now."

"Fuck you," was the kid's flat response.

"That's Titus," said Seifer.

"Ti _dus_! My name is _Tidus_ with a 'D'. It's not that hard."

"We got grabbed together."

"Grabbed?"

"Well, not really together. We were on different trains..."

"Trains?"

"This shit doesn't even have anything to do with me..."

"Oh, don't it? They just grabbed you for their health, huh?"

Tidus rolled his eyes, "So...what? This is some biker gangwar shit? You guys are with the Earthshakers right?"

"Regular band of brothers," said Axel, "Hey, Seef, wanna show him our tramp stamps?"

Seifer reddened more than Axel had expected him to, given the relative ease with which he'd made the joke. He turned to Tidus, "Don't know for sure, kid, but it's probably a bit more complexicated."

"Maybe not," said Axel, "Rox and I were grabbed by the Wind Makers. No doubt."

"Rox, huh?" Seifer turned to Roxas, "So he's with you?"

"He is," said Axel, looking at him, "Fuck, he is."

He moved closer to Roxas, looking him over.

"What's wrong with him?" asked Tidus.

"Nothing..." said Axel, "Most of the time. I don't know. He..." and here Axel felt a deep sinking in his chest, something he couldn't quite describe. Sadness maybe, or disappointment. A deep and rich disappointment, so full that he might drown in it.

"He was getting better," he reached out, put his hand over Roxas's still, limp one, "He was getting better."

"Then the Wind Makers came along?" Seifer rolled his eyes, "Just what I fucking needed. That bitch's been looking to skin me for years."

"Yeah, well you're not _all_ she wants," said Axel bitterly.

"So it's true, then?" Seifer cocked an eyebrow, "Hell, here I was thinking even _you_ couldn't be _that_ stupid, even back then."

"This isn't personal. Probably."

"Business, then? What kind?"

"The dirty kind. I'm sure you can relate."

He expected Seifer to make another of his tacit refutations, but again he just gritted his teeth, "Don't have time for this."

"Yeah, being kidnapped's just _totally_ inconvenient. I'm gonna have to cancel all my weekend plans. _Such_ a drag."

"So...what?" asked Tidus, "Cloud's one of you guys, or one of the Wind Makers?"

"Well, the name's a bit airy..." said Axel.

"He's a real person," said Seifer, "And no, he's no biker."

"Wait, his name's _actually_ Cloud?" asked Axel.

"Apparently," shrugged Tidus, nodding at Seifer, "Ask him."

"Consider the relevant questions asked," Axel rounded on him too. Seifer rolled his eyes, "I don't know what to tell you."

"Sure you don't," Axel rolled his eyes, "We all know what a bundle of integrity you are, Seifer. Just a gem of moral virtue in sea of ruffians and ragamuffins."

"Like you've ever done a damn thing for anybody!"

"And you're just Mother Theresa. Give me a break, Almasy. You might not have snatched up Riku and his little friend, but you sure as hell had a part in it."

" _What?_ " demanded Tidus.

"Ooh, you didn't tell him? Well, funny story, kid, but if you got riled up over my 'Vette, just _wait_ till you hear about Seifer being a transparent cowardly snitch bitch."

"I did what I had to do, alright?" Seifer demanded, leaning forward.

"So that's a confession?"

"You know what, Axel? It is. Fuck do I get out of keeping it..."

Tidus railed at him, "You set it up? Sora and...and Riku and..."

"I'm sure it's a fascinating story," said Axel, "But I'm more interested in what the hell you were doing when you got..."

Tidus punched Seifer in the face.

"Jesus, kid, where do you _keep_ that energy?"

Even if Tidus had wanted to say something in response to that, he was stopped by another first from Seifer.

"I've taken a lot of lumps, but I'm _damned_ if some beach bum assberry knocks _me_ around..."

"Assberry? _I'm_ an assberry? You just confessed to getting my friend kidnapped?"

"In his defense, that probably merits a stronger insult than 'assberry'," Axel offered.

Tidus charged, but quickly tumbled to his feet. They all lurched forward, the cables above them creaking again. The car was moving, inexorably, further up toward the top.

"Well, that can't be good," said Axel dimly, looking furtively over at Roxas, hoping for at least a whimper or a yelp or...something indicating life. He got nothing.

"What do you think they're gonna do?" asked Tidus.

"Pick someone to throw off the mountain probably," said Axel, only half joking.

Both Seifer and Tidus's eyes went at once to Roxas. Axel decided to pretend he hasn't noticed, and began mentally calculating Seifer's weight just in case.

The cable car came to a shuddering stop at an elevated platform outside a tiny enclosure that Axel supposed must have once been used to store skis and whatever other junk one needed at a ski resort. Tidus immediately got to his feet, bending forward on one leg. Axel and Seifer both eyed him and he looked at them like they were both regular ticket idiots.

"The door opens and we jump 'em," he explained.

"Yeah, no dice, sport. That's now how this game works."

"I'm not your _sport_."

The door opened before Axel could say anymore to that. Two burly figures in Wind Maker jackets stood on the landing, shoulder to shoulder.

"You the new mooks?" asked Axel, "What happened to the last ones?"

Neither of them said a word, each reaching forward to take Axel by an arm, dragging him from the car.

"Is it because of my big mouth or does she just _really_ miss me?" he asked, trying his best obnoxious smirk.

Again, no reply. He looked over his shoulder, locked eyed with Seifer, and mouthed ' _Watch him_ ', indicating Roxas.

Seifer looked the lifeless kid's way, looking uncertain, but he nodded at Axel all the same. Axel wasn't an idiot, at least not where Seifer was concerned. He'd better hope he was done with this fast. He couldn't leave Roxas here. Not after everything he'd done for him, not after he'd dragged him along from the relative safety of his freezer unit, or whatever that thing had been.

Shepherded along between the two Wind Maker lieutenants, Axel was led through the tiny cable car shed and along a winding dirt road through stretches of fine Colorado pine forest. They must be north of the county, closest to the Rockies.

Going down the path, they passed a big wooden signpost on which was written, in peeling paint, _Crystal Spires Ski Resort_ , and some smaller motto that, in the harshness of the high afternoon sun, Axel couldn't make out without straining his eyes.

"So...the whole dangling your prisoners from a thousand feet thing?" he prompted, "Pretty Medieval. What happens if we decide to hell with it and go with the mass suicide thing?"

Again, no response. Fun.

"You know, I always knew I joined up with the _fun_ gang. I mean, really, you guys are squatting in a _country_ _club_ now? That's what this place is. Poor people don't go skiing. Proven fact."

They reached a two story stone and wood building at the head of the path. Axel supposed it had been a lodge when the place was still running. They went up a set of short stone steps, through open wooden doors and into a wide lobby.

The place stank of mildew, old wood. Clearly the new tenants weren't very keen on the upkeep. There, _was_ however an after scent of pine needles and other woodsy, _wintery_ smells. Fresh, clean. So maybe _someone_ , at least, was trying.

Axel didn't have to guess who.

"Well, well, look what the broke down hippie bus dragged in."

"More like spat out," Axel said as easily as he could, looking to the wing backed armchair positioned beneath the huge stone fireplace, in which his hostess was seated, legs crossed, hands placed firmly on either arm of her makeshift throne.

"And it's a _van,_ anyway. You did hang onto it, right? I kinda borrowed it, and it'd feel nice to honor a deal every once in a while, you know?"

"Trying out new things, then, in more ways than one," she smirked.

"Oh, you know me. Full of surprises."

Mook 1 and Mook 2 both tensed to either side of him. Axel rolled his eyes, adding, through clenched teeth, "Your Grace."

"Oh, please," she waved her hand, "Say it if you mean it, otherwise it's more insulting than not saying it at all. Besides, I always kinda liked my name in your voice."

"It's like that, is it?"

She shrugged. Axel sighed, figuring this could be going way worse in several other directions, so he relented.

"You know me..." he grinned, "Elsa."

She swept to her feet with her usual quiet grace. She moved down the short steps from the hearth, feet somehow making next to no noise on the hardwood floor in her fitted motorcycle boots.

"Axel," she paused just steps in front of him, "I like the tats."

Axel reached up to feel the teardrops on his face, "Thanks."

"There's a story attached to those, I bet. Do I want to guess it?"

"You'll have to, 'cuz I'm not telling."

She smiled, "Of course you're not. I can read you like a takeout menu, but God knows if you can't keep a secret all the same."

She snapped her fingers, nodded at the mooks. They nodded in return and left. Axel heard the big doors of the lodge closing behind them.

"Sending away your hired meat? You must really trust me."

"I'm not scared of you, Axel. And, besides, you don't want to _hurt_ me. Because I have something you want."

"Can't say I missed _this_ game."

She cocked an eyebrow. Axel sighed, "I missed it a little. Guess you missed me a lot more."

"Don't be a pervert," she reached into her jacket and produced a thin manila envelope, "You recognize it, of course?"

Axel tensed. Somehow, he'd forgotten all about the little missive that had put him in this mess in the first place.

"Course I do," he said at length, "Belongs to your boss man."

" _Contractor_. Not a boss. Or does Seifer rent you guys out to whichever huckster has the biggest pockets nowadays?"

"I really don't know, but between you and me it's probably something even worse," he paused, "If maybe less imaginative."

"You can stop kissing my ass whenever you like. It's exhausting."

"For you, maybe, but I could do this all day. So...what? Great White Hunter wants his stuff back, sent you to get it. Right?"

"That's the gist," she held the corner of the envelope up to her lips, "You want to ask me what I was hired for in the _first_ place?"

"You're not gonna tell me."

Elsa shrugged, "Nothing wrong with you being told. Gaston and his partner wanted to shine a light on their _other_...less reputable partners."

"Partners?"

"From considerably farther south."

Axel looked down to the floor and Elsa nodded, "Good guess."

"Gaston's butler or...whoever the hell he was...said he moved money for the Styx and Stones."

"Hades pissed them off somehow. My understanding, something really ugly happened down there over the weekend and Hades is trying like _hell_ to cover it up."

"And your guys don't want him to succeed."

Elsa shook her head, "My guess, they want to create a power vacuum to get cozy in."

"The Wind Makers are enabling the mob now?"

Elsa scoffed, "Do you _really_ think your crew's never danced with the devil?"

"Never said that. Hey, I'm not knocking it either. If anybody could do it, it's you."

"I'm flattered," she told him, sounding decisively _un_ flattered.

"So you got what you wanted. From me, at least," he indicated the envelope, "I don't think I need to ask about Seifer..."

"I'm sorry for sticking you together with him," she said, again not sounding very sorry, "The experience is nauseating enough as it is."

"What are you doing, planning a coup? Because, between us, he's not very popular with our crew."

"Well, that's sad," she smiled, offering no other comment.

"And the high school kid? What about him?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she swept up the steps back to the hearth, looking into the low, crackling flames within.

"Yeah, I would. Hence the asking."

"You say _hence_ now? That's adorable."

"So don't answer me."

"That boy with you. Who is he?"

"Do you know?"

"You _don't_?"

"Neither do you," Axel crossed his arms.

Elsa was quiet for a short while, "Is he hurt?"

"I...what?"

"We brought him over here and he got all spaced out. I thought he might've had a concussion or something. Given your dramatic exit from Gaston's, I have to assume this is a recent development."

Axel wasn't sure how to answer that, and less sure what Elsa intended to do with the information. At last, he answered, "He's got nothing to do with any of this, Elsa. So leave him out."

"Oh?" she waved the envelope around, "The paperwork begs to differ."

She must've seen the look on Axel's face because she smiled one of those sly smirks Axel remembered so well, "So you _haven't_ read this stuff yet? Sloppy, Axel. Or do you still need Little Boy Blue to do your reading for you?"

Axel took a step forward, but Elsa just tossed her silver blond braid, laughing aloud, "Oh, you are _so_ easy."

"You have the envelope. I didn't read it. Just...just let me and the kid go."

"And leave poor Seifer and Tidus alone?"

"I wouldn't get you to release them anyway. I've got no leverage."

"That you don't. Axel, I'm afraid you're missing the point."

"Enlighten me."

"I'm not your enemy here. Just...a concerned business partner."

"I don't need your concern."

"Oh, but I think you do," she said seriously, "These papers in my hand are...very important. They implicate a _lot_ of people in a _lot_ of...ugly stuff. Powerful people, preying on vulnerable people... Suffice to say, this would be of great interest to...many parties..."

"I see where this is going..."

"Oh, don't make that disgusted face. You know as well as I do that what we do...it's a business. We talk about freedom from the shackles of the societal machine, but we just made our own society along the way. Only difference is our shackles are a bit...looser. And we get to do the shackling."

"You're gonna sell those papers?"

"Well, not right _away_ , obviously. I'd have to find some buyers."

"You're smart, you don't need my help."

"Oh, but I think I _do_. You have a stake in all this, or else you wouldn't have been at that house in the first place."

"Maybe I just took a wrong turn..."

"It's the boy? Isn't it?" she smiled, "You don't know anything about him, do you?"

Axel again eyed the envelope. Elsa, sensing this, folded it up in one hand, "All in time. You'd better go back to your car before it gets dark."

She snapped her fingers and, like nothing, her mooks returned. They must have been waiting just outside.

"Just like that, huh?"

"Always a pleasure, Axel."

"I can't believe you," he told her.

"Funny. I believe you _less_ , and yet you're still here. Isn't that something? Go, get some rest," she turned her back to him, facing the fireplace, "And, while you're at it, I'd give some thought to just how much certain things of yours are worth. And how willing you are to let them go."

* * *

 **A/N:** I reserve the right to liberally douse this story with characters confirmed to be appearing in KH3, though the Elsa thing was thought of before the trailer, I didn't start hammering the details out until after it was released. And if Roz _isn't_ in the _Monster's Inc_. World, what is the point?

Chapter 30 next Friday! See you then.


	30. Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Chapter 30, Are You Afraid of the Dark?

 **A/N:** 30 Chapters...you know, I'm not ashamed to admit this is the longest I've ever stuck with a fanfic project. As a mostly accidental, but still special bonus for this occasion, Chapter 30 is five scenes rather than four...though two of them are a bit on the shorter side. I digress.

Hope you enjoy it!

* * *

Well, if anything, they were at least eating the sandwiches.

" _What_ is it about motherhood and mayonnaise?" Lucrecia asked, dabbing apologetically at her lips with one of the hospital's cafe's flimsy brown napkins, "I swear, I couldn't even _look_ at the stuff without getting sick, but then along come kids..."

"It's probably some chemical trigger," Celeste smiled, adjusting herself in the thin-cushioned seat, "The same one that tells us to fill up on gas before the tank is half empty, and how to convert migraines into sustainable energy."

"I never liked mayonnaise very much," said Amphitrite flatly, indicating her barely touched sandwich, "Perhaps that makes me an unnatural mother."

Celeste couldn't help but shrink a little in her seat. Amphitrite, perhaps detecting this, added, "No offense, of course, Celeste. It was very kind of you to think of me."

"No trouble, Amphitrite," said Celeste quickly, "Really. It's only that I know you've practically set up camp here..."

"Hopefully not for much longer," Amphitrite looked over toward Lucrecia, "Correct?"

The third woman shrugged apologetically, "I wish I could tell you, Amphitrite. They only just let me on as a consultant. I've barely had time to review the case, see what they're looking for."

"You're a neurologist?" Celeste asked. Lucrecia nodded, "Biochemist, technically, but I got my start with brain medicine."

"And you think...Namine's problem is connected to her brain?"

Amphitrite tensed noticeably. Lucrecia sighed, "It's difficult to say, but I'm sure it _stems_ from her brain. At least most of it. There's still the question of her aging...or, well, _not_ aging."

"It is remarkable," said Amphitrite softly, "So remarkable that I almost wish it weren't true."

A noticeable chill seemed to descend on their tiny table. Celeste scooted forward a little in her seat, "It must be so surreal, having her back like this..."

"No need to mince words," Amphitrite looked from Celeste to Lucrecia, "I know well what you're both thinking. That I'm losing my senses, clinging too tightly to that shred of hope. But I'm afraid I've everything _but_ hope in good supply."

She put both her hands together in front of her, "I never _asked_ for Namine back. Not even in my grief. Did I wish she hadn't died? That I might've acted in some way to...to keep what happened from coming to pass? Of course. But I did not want her back. What right had I to demand such a thing, anyway? But she is back. Just like herself and yet...and yet not herself at all. And my granddaughter is still missing. So I can't say I'm very hopeful this saga has a happy ending."

Celeste wasn't sure what to say to that, watching as Amphitrite lowered her head with a long sigh.

It was Lucrecia who spoke, at length, "Namine _looks_ 17\. From what I can tell, she only _knows_ 17 too."

Amphitrite nodded, "There are six missing years. Kairi is a part of that."

"She doesn't know about her daughter," Celeste said softly, "God..."

"There's no point telling her. Imagine the shock."

Lucrecia agreed, "We'd have to determine the cause of the trauma first. Presuming that it _is_ trauma and not something more...insidious."

"Insidious...how?"

Lucrecia didn't say anything right away, picking listlessly at a few scattered crumbs on the cellophane wrap before her. Finally, she said, "We'll just...have to keep a very close eye on her."

"She'll have to stay here, then?" asked Amphitrite, cocking an eyebrow with an ill-disguised expression of distaste.

"I'm sorry, Amphitrite, but these are intensive tests. She'd have to be admitted anyway, so there's no point discharging her now."

Amphitrite didn't appear satisfied by that, but she did add, "I am glad you're here, at least, Lucrecia. Better you than one of these other clowns."

"As soon as I heard what had happened, there was no question I had to do what I could," she paused, "And, of course, I would've had to come home anyway."

"It must've been a shock," said Celeste tentatively, "Hearing about something like _that_ happening in your apartment."

She watched Lucrecia's face carefully, partly rebuking herself for the action. But she had to know. And if she was so reduced in options that she had to watch people's faces for tells than so be it.

"I about dropped the phone when the police called me," she said at last, "I...I hadn't thought about Aerith in years. She...she was good. Kind."

"She was," agreed Celeste softly.

"They'll find her killer, I'm sure," said Amphitrite shortly, "Even _our_ local law enforcement can't possibly be so incompetent."

Maybe Celeste was imagining it, but the old woman's eyes seemed to linger on Lucrecia, whose shoulders slumped just slightly.

 _Does Amphitrite know?_ The thought came to Celeste with a start, _About Cloud? She's been right in front of you all this time..._

"You did find Zack, though, right?" Celeste asked Lucrecia, figuring it was good a time as ever to maneuver from the subject.

"Oh?" Lucrecia nodded, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, pretty quickly after we spoke, actually. I'm sorry about that, by the way. I'm sure I gave you a scare."

"I've been scared worse," Celeste assured her, "I'm just glad you found him."

"Where was he?" asked Amphitrite, "I was under the impression I'd given him run of my house, even if just to make sure the laundry was all taken care of."

Lucrecia adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose, "He...he was out late last night."

Both Celeste and Amphitrite sat up straighter, with new attention, though Celeste suspected this was for very different reasons.

"Why ever for?" asked Amphitrite.

"Something about needing some air."

"And you believed that?"

Celeste looked at Amphitrite reproachfully, but she couldn't deny she felt a similar way on that score. Lucrecia, for her credit, tensed, saying in a strained voice, "Of course not. But I believe the gist of it."

"The gist?"

"He's had a very hard time lately. I can buy him wanting to get away. I just...I wish he'd be more careful, company or not."

"Company?"

Lucrecia smiled thinly, "A girl. Selphie."

Amphitrite snorted dismissively, " _Selphie._ She's got her nose in everything, that one. I'd call her dedication admirable if it weren't so annoying."

Celeste leaned forward in her seat, "Zack was with Selphie?"

Lucrecia looked surprised, "...yes. Not that Zack would really _explain_ anything. I'm sure I've never seen him with her before..."

"It was just the two of them? Nobody else?"

Lucrecia looked confused. Amphitrite clarified, "Your boy's been hanging about with Selphie and another of his teammates. Tidus."

"They found Aerith's body together," Celeste added, not sure what she expected from that.

Lucrecia tensed, fingers on one hand drumming against the linoleum of the tabletop, "Well...it was just the two of them this morning."

"Word of advice, my dear, but I'd try to put some space between Zacharias and Selphie. The girl means well, but..."

Celeste didn't listen to the rest of the admonitions. Something told her Selphie and Zack hadn't just been taking the air around town all night. Maybe Lucrecia suspected the same, but probably under very different conditions.

She remembered Milo's visit with her this morning, his assertions that Selphie had something to do with his missing letter. If they'd decided to take this kid detective thing further, going so far as to roam around town in the night...

They must be onto something. Even _Selphie_ wasn't so harebrained as to just go off half cocked, not without some idea of what she was doing, what they were after.

And now, with Cloud's own mother back in town... Celeste wasn't sure how much Lucrecia knew or could be expected to know. Much less of how much she could trust to tell her. Celeste knew very well how _she_ would react if near strangers tried to lambaste Sora to her face.

"Well, she _did_ give me an earful this morning," Lucrecia smiled faintly, "But, in her defense, I almost ran her over. I suppose she can't be blamed."

"Still, odd circumstances," said Amphitrite, "Her and your boy together."

Lucrecia's eyebrows knit together. Celeste got the impression it was taking a lot of effort to seem as unruffled as she was.

"Amphitrite, I have a question," she offered eventually, in yet another attempt to change the subject.

"Oh?"

"When I came by, I was told there were no visitors allowed. Do you know anything about that?"

Amphitrite frowned, "Only that if they try turfing _me_ out of that room, certain individuals will _wish_ they'd been fired."

"They kept you from going upstairs?" asked Lucrecia.

"Something about the 'doctor's orders'."

"To avoid over-stimulation, probably. I had to put my share of talking in just to get past Facilier."

"Silly regulation, if you ask me. Namine seems stubbornly set against getting stimulated by _anything,_ " Amphitrite looked at Celeste, "How _did_ you get past the desk, then?"

"Oh...someone vouched for me. One of the hospital board members."

"A friend of yours?"

"Nothing like that," Celeste smiled, feeling a little embarrassed, "He just...took pity on me, I think. I was making a scene."

"Still, good to have friends in the upper management around here. My husband was always exasperated by board politics. But damn it all if he stayed on the board as long as ugly circumstance would allow..."

"That's right," Celeste realized, "Your husband was a board member."

"Before your time, my dear, but yes. They named the pediatric ward after him."

"Well, maybe he knew the man I met."

"Celeste, it's more than twenty years since he died..."

"Oh, you're probably right. Still, it _is_ a coincidence. This man had his same job."

Amphitrite froze, eyes widening. Next to her, Lucrecia had grown noticeably still.

"Same job? You mean..."

"He's the CEO at _X_ -Corp."

"He's on the _board_?" demanded Amphitrite, leaning back in her chair as a chilly look of realization came over her, "Oh my God."

"What is it? Amphitrite, is something..."

"Where was he going?" she demanded, "When you saw him, where was he going?"

"Well, he was on his way out..."

"I _told_ him!" she got to her feet, "I told him, if he tried _anything_..."

"Amphitrite!"

But she was already halfway across the cafe to the lobby. Celeste watched her go, mouth hanging open, "I...I don't understand."

"It's not your fault," said Lucrecia, shifty-eyed, "I don't have to tell you what a private person Amphitrite is, you had no way of knowing..."

"Does she know him? Xemnas?"

Lucrecia shrugged, "His father and her husband founded a company together. They were all thick as thieves once upon a time, even when I was there. Things didn't really fall about until later."

"You work for _X_ -Corp?"

Her expression tightened, but only just, "My husband and I, for a time. Ansem got me my first serious post. R&D for their applied sciences division. But that was a long time ago."

Celeste was thinking, an ugly twisting in her gut, "He knew I was here to see Namine. He said he overheard but...but that scene didn't really become a scene until after I established that. He'd have had to be trying to eavesdrop."

"He and Nami grew up together," Lucrecia said sadly, "They used to hang around the building all day, playing together. That's how I ended up being friends with her. There weren't a lot of other girls around the place back then...male dominated industry, you know how it is."

"I'm a waitress," Celeste shrugged, "But I get it."

"I think she saw me as kind of a big sister. But with Xemnas..." she sighed, "They were best friends."

"Then he was trying to see his old friend again," said Celeste, "...right?"

"I can't say. It's not your fault, you had no way of knowing. But if she already spoke to him when he was here, and he still tried to see her..."

"Maybe he wasn't. He _is_ on the board, maybe he was just going about some other business."

"Yeah..." Lucrecia nodded, though she didn't sound very convinced, "Maybe."

* * *

"Well," said Axel glumly, "At least it's a sweet view."

Seifer snorted dismissively, giving one fleeting look out the cable car window before wrinkling up his nose as if he could smell the sunset, and didn't like it very much.

"We used to look at the sunset," said Tidus with glum resignation, propping his head up in his hand, "Climb up on top of my Dad's truck, look out over the lake like it was a movie or something."

"No kidding? We used to do the same thing."

"You and your Dad?"

Axel shook his head, "My Dad didn't know where the sun _was_ half the time, it woulda been funny if it weren't so depressing. Nah, my friends and I. We'd go over to the rail yard outside Twilight, watch the sun dipping behind those mountains."

" _You know,_ " Saix's voice, haughty without effort, " _What they say about sunsets?_ "

" _Lots of poetic garbage, probably,_ " Larxene smirked, crossing her legs over the side of the boxcar they'd hauled themselves up on, " _Please to enlighten us._ "

He'd shrugged, " _Watching the sun set is the closest proof we have of the existence of God._ "

They all sat there, the four of them, looking out at the sun over the western mountains, shadows lengthening in its wake. Finally, Demyx let out a long gasp, " _So_ that's _what that is_."

Larxene rolled her eyes, but Axel just laughed, throwing his head back, " _You're killing me, Moonboy._ "

" _I didn't say I believe it!_ "

" _No, but you still_ know _it._ "

" _How could I forget? It's so_ lame _to know things._ "

" _What if it's true?_ " asked Demyx.

" _Aw, Christ, look what you did..._ " muttered Larxene.

" _It's just an expression, Rainman,_ " said Axel.

" _Call it poetic license_ ," explained Saix, " _You can explain anything with anything if you try hard enough._ "

" _But...there_ is _a feeling,_ " said Demyx, " _Looking at a sunset. Right?_ "

" _Right,_ " Saix agreed, " _But that's mostly suggestion. We're_ told _sunsets are important, profound, that they're_ supposed _to mean something. So when we look at them, and we feel.._. _that. That's just our bodies doing what they were told._ "

" _Oh,_ :" Demyx's shoulders sank. Axel shook his head, " _That's mighty cynical, Moonboy._ "

" _You laughed at the poetic bit._ "

" _Sure, but it still_ sounds _better_."

It was Saix's turn to roll his eyes, and Larxene's to scoff. Later, Axel would realize she'd been watching them intently. Perhaps she'd always been watching. More things he might've asked her, if he wasn't certain he knew the answer, and even more certain he didn't want to hear it.

"Something about a sunset..." he said at last, forcing himself back to the present.

He turned to Roxas next to him, looking at the red of the sun reflected in those big blue eyes. If he was experiencing proof of God's existence, it clearly didn't impress him much. He remained as vacant as ever.

"Gonna be dark soon," Seifer offered.

"That's what typically happens at sunset, Seifer, thanks," said Axel.

Seifer gritted his teeth at him, "Good time to _try_ something. Even if the bitch's got guys watching, they''ll have trouble seeing."

"Don't call her a bitch," said Axel.

"Still soft on her, huh?"

Axel wordlessly pointed upward to indicate the tiny speaker interface inset in the ceiling, "Never know when she's listening. And, take it from me, she's pretty prickly about name-calling."

Seifer grimaced, flipping the bird at the speaker, which Axel was sure would come across loud and clear.

"So...this lady," said Tidus, "She's the Ice Queen, right? From the stories?"

"The very one, hallowed be her name," Axel said in a bored, yet ringing voice, looking toward the speaker.

"There's _stories_?" asked Seifer.

"Kids tell 'em," said Tidus, "Ice Queen of the Wind Makers, she blows down the road in the night, kidnaps dudes to have really cold sex with."

"Eh, it's not as cold as you'd think."

Tidus stared at Axel, gobsmacked. He felt compelled to add, "And I'm not just saying that for the audience at home."

"You and her..."

"One of my less colorful adventures," he hesitated, looking again at the intercom, "Through...um...no fault of Her Majesty's own."

Seifer scoffed, "Kids don't tell stories about _me_."

"Sure they do," said Axel, "About how Leon the Lionhearted decorated your face."

Seifer glared, "I decorated his face back, thanks."

"Yeah, but _he_ was trying to avenge the girl, so dramatic conventions dictate..."

"That's a load of bull," said Seifer, "That mess was all Leon. He knew he fucked up, decided to take it out on me."

"Wait, Leon?" asked Tidus, "Like...Leonhart? The cop?"

"You know him, a good little citizen like you?" asked Axel.

"I know who he is," Tidus shrugged, "No big deal, I just...wondered."

"Small world," said Axel.

"Cramping small," Seifer rapped his knuckles against the cable car window, "Maybe we can talk _less_ about Leonhart and more about getting out of here?"

"Sore subject, huh?"

"You don't even _know_ how sore," said Seifer, turning to look back out the window, where the sky was going from purple to indigo, a rich, abiding darkness descending on the world.

With a sharp electrical hum, lights flickered on in their car. Axel shrugged, looking at Seifer, "So much for getting away in the dark, huh?"

"Like they can see us from up there," he nodded in the general direction of the cable car landing.

"They put the lights on for a reason," pointed out Tidus.

"Maybe they don't want to leave us in the dark," said Axel, "Ice Queen's still soft on me."

He looked furtively at the intercom as he said this, but it didn't explode in a flurry of shrapnel, so he was probably fine. For now.

"You and the Ice Witch," said Seifer, "The _fuck_ was I thinking, letting you join up with us?"

"Hey, it was _just_ a few days," Axel protested, "And it wasn't...personal."

"Doesn't matter what you say, women is personal."

"Ah, yes," Axel nodded, smiling vacantly, "The womens."

Seifer groused to himself as Axel turned to Tidus, "What about you? Got a lady in your life?"

"None of _your_ business."

"That's a yes, then. Come on, strapping lad like yourself, I'm sure you're really popular with the fancy sex."

" _Fine_ ," said Seifer, "The _finer_ sex."

"Fair," said Tidus in a strained voice, "Fairer sex."

"So there _is_ someone?" asked Axel, "C'mon, man, we're all in the same box. No secrets."

Tidus sighed, "Yeah, I've...I've got a girlfriend."

"You almost sound ashamed," said Axel, "I'd say I didn't get it, but I do and that's the worst part."

"She that girl, right?" asked Seifer, "The one you were running around with on the train?"

"Do I get to hear what happened on the train?" asked Axel.

"I told you already, I was trying to catch up to _this_ guy and his friends, we got separated, I got jumped."

"Something like that," said Tidus.

"So...you were with her when you got..."

"No," said Tidus, though his face changed almost as soon as he'd said it, " _No._ I mean...I mean I don't...she wasn't..." he shook his head, "She's fine. We...we split up, she should be...she _can't_ be..."

Axel for a tiny stab of pity, "I'm sure she's fine, kid."

"You're basically my age!"

"Yeah, but I can smoke, drive, and vote if there was anybody worth voting for."

"You don't vote?" asked Seifer, sounding surprisingly outraged.

"What, you do?"

"Damn right, I do! Civical responsibility."

"I can do...all that stuff too.," said Tidus, "How old do you guys think I am?"

"Pretty stupid," said Seifer by way of answer.

"So 16, 17 tops. I guess 18, at a stretch. You've just got such a youthful glow and bite..."

"Fuck you."

"Yeah, like that."

"What were you trying to do, anyway?" asked Seifer, "Looking for Cloud?"

" _Who_ is Cloud?" asked Axel.

"Better you don't know," said Seifer.

"Aw, please..."

"Someone who knew Cloud," Tidus answered, "A friend of his or...something, I don't really know, I...I was kinda in my head."

"And Cloud is important because..."

"He's a killer," said Tidus, "Ax-crazy psycho, the whole nine frigging yards. You satisfied?"

So, clearly, Axel had missed a lot on his impromptu vacation. He cleared his throat, "You and your girlfriend were on some True Crime kick, or is going after ax-crazy killers just an after school activity for you guys?"

"Was a pretty dippy idea, to be honest," pointed out Seifer.

"Hey, shut up, man. You wanna talk about stupid, try chasing three kids around a train, at _midnight_ , with a hood over your face."

" _Seriously?_ " Axel grinned, "Oh, that is _rich._ Reminds me of when we raided that bodega on Lasseter and Unkrich."

"That's not import..." began Seifer, but Axel kept going.

"He makes this big fuss about how _good_ he is at laying low, how it's important none of us show our faces. Meanwhile, he's the guy with the big red crosses on his bike. Cops were on us in a second. It's like, who elected this guy leader right?"

"Axel..."

"Who _did_ elect you leader, anyway?" asked Axel, "Because, if I'm getting this right, wasn't that election tainted by a outside entity? Kinda makes you think there should've been a recount when it all boiled over..."

"You can stuff it whenever you want."

" _Want_ is the imperative word."

"I'll imperate ya," he turned away, "Point is, Cloud's bad news."

"And _your_ news, apparently," said Axel, "What were _you_ doing looking for him?"

"Wouldn't mind knowing that myself," said Tidus, "If you're not gonna explain what you were doing setting up Sora to be grabbed, you might as well..."

"I never meant your Sora to get grabbed!" Seifer spat, like, _actually_ spat on the floor, as if in flagrant disregard for all their hygiene in this elevated petri dish.

"No, of course not, just one of your own," said Axel.

Seifer, at least, didn't bother to defend that, just saying, "Well, it don't matter anymore, anyway."

"Because we're all gonna get killed by the Ice Bitch?" asked Tidus.

"Because your boy got _out,_ " said Seifer, "Riku too."

Axel straightened at this not-new news, but this was nothing to the way Tidus leaned forward, "Really? So...that thing with the train, the Sunset Line, that was them?"

"Probably," Seifer shrugged.

"Definitely," said Axel.

"You know for sure?"

Axel hesitated. He supposed he _could_ always tell them about his encounter with Sora at the Mansion, Sora telling him Riku was there too, somewhere... The likely fact they were _still_ there since he and Larxene had skipped the joint, him with a totally different teenage victim of circumstance and Larxene with a murder charge.

He looked at the intercom on the ceiling and made up his mind, "I've got a feeling. Call it 'friend sense'. I know when my people need me."

Tidus looked unconvinced. They sat in different corners of the car for some time, letting darkness fall. Axel wondered if the stars were out yet. He wasn't in the mood to press his face against the window. Knowing his luck that would only end one way.

"So what about him?"

Axel followed Seifer's gaze to Roxas, "What about him?"

" _Everything_ about him. Smart guy would've gotten out of town without looking back, doing what you did."

"It bears repeating, I wouldn't have _had_ to do it if you'd just..."

"Not the point. You could've been South of the Border by now."

"Always did wanna try some of that meat on a stick stuff they've got down there," Axel mused.

"The hell were you still doing knocking around here with the Crash Test Dummy?"

"I thought we established it's none of your business."

"I could say the same damn thing about every question you've asked me tonight. Didn't keep you from asking," he leaned forward, "You wanna know what I think?"

"No."

"It's kinda shady."

"Coming from you? I'm flattered."

Seifer kept on, "Teen kid, don't talk, don't move...God knows why not. But something pretty fucked must've happened to him."

"You're implying something," Axel leaned to put his face just opposite Seifer's, "Word of advice, brother. Don't. Even. _Try_."

"I'm just saying, Ax. My kinda work..."

"Which work? The felonies or the heresies?"

"People only need boys like that for two reasons. And something tells me you didn't stop to check if his kidneys were any good, so..."

Axel punched him, not even thinking about it. Seifer went flying back across the cable, rocking them back and forth again. Tidus cried out a warning, but Axel wasn't listening.

"Jesus..." Seifer winced, sitting up, "Fucking _Christ_ , Axel..."

"Wanna revise your statement, man?"

"I wasn't being _serious_..."

Axel punched him again, "Newsflash, but you're not very funny. So don't try to be."

"Oh, yeah?" Seifer pushed back, "It _was_ a joke, man, but now that I think about it, you're getting pretty defensive for..."

Axel hit him again, from the opposite side this time. Seifer lashed back, but he was dazed and Axel ducked the blow.

"Guys, could you just _stop_ it?" demanded Tidus, "Or did you forget we're kinda..."

Seifer grabbed Axel by the leg, pulling him down to his knees, "You wanna try fighting dirty, Axel? Cuz I can fight _dirty_."

"Fancy that," Axel raised his knee into Seifer's squishy bits, perfectly placed in close striking distance. Seifer squealed through clenched teeth, falling backward.

"Now, take it back," said Axel, breathing raggedly.

"You're fucking crazy..."

"Take. It. _Back_."

"So defensive, Axel...don't tell me I was _right_?"

Axel grabbed him by his shirt, "You're a piece of shit."

"So I've heard. You're gonna have to come up with something more creat..."

Axel punched him right square in the chest, a real sucker punch, he couldn't remember the last one of the kind he'd thrown.

He must have been better at this than he thought.

Seifer convulsed violently there on the floor, his face going a vivid red, his teeth clenched. His hands writhed and grasped at the smooth floor, as if looking for purchase.

"Aw, shit, _again_!" said Tidus.

"What, this has happened _before_?"

"On the train last night, he's got some kinda heart condition or something..."

"The hell he _doesn't,_ " he turned back to Seifer, "Hey, hey, Seifer...you okay, man? Aw, c'mon... _fuck_!"

Seifer reeled back, letting out a high, stilted cry. The car rocked back, then forth...

"I swear to God," said Tidus, "If I die because of you shitheads..."

"N-not..." Seifer struggled, "This can't...can't be... _ach_..." there was a frightened quality to his voice, a sheen of sweat on his brow.

"Seifer? Seifer, what the hell's happening to..."

He moved as if to get to his feet, but he his legs failed him, he began to fall forward...

The next few things happened very fast. There was a short _bzzt_ sort of sound, and the hazy orange glow of the light fixtures vanished, the lights going off in an instant. None of them had time to react, Seifer had already fallen against the opposite door...

Which opened, swinging outward taking Seifer with it.

"Holy..." Axel began, but he had no time to finish. The weight of Seifer on the open door had caused the whole car to tilt westward. The expanse of the night sky outside became a landscape view of the mountain gully miles below.

Axel caught onto a groove of the window behind him, hanging onto it by his fingertips, struggling for a better hold.

There was a whoosh of cool air past his ears, a shadow... Axel felt his stomach sink.

"Roxas!" he grasped wildly, reaching for the kid's hand, but he fell too fast, toward the door, out.

He didn't think, he couldn't. He let go of the window (add that to his running list of achievements in the field of common sense), felt himself falling clearing the doorway. He locked eyes with Roxas falling ahead of him, had a fleeting image of an earlier fall, his own breathless terror, Roxas's weird, benign smile.

"Got ya!" he closed his hand around Roxas's own, suspended in air.

Wait...

"Aw, fuck...aw, shit, you're heavy."

Axel couldn't turn around, but he could feel the pressure on his ankle, two hands wrapped around it.

"Thanks, kid," he breathed.

"Call me 'kid' again and I let go!" Tidus called.

"Noted," Axel swallowed, "Can you pull us up?"

"Where's Seifer?"

"Uh..." Axel felt Roxas's hand straining against his own, and tightened his grip, "I...I think we lost him."

"I'm right here, chipshmuck!"

"Oh, there he is," Axel looked over to the open door, Seifer holding desperately onto the outside of it, his hair a tangled mess and a wild look in his eyes.

Seifer let out an indignant roar, pushing against the door. Getting the idea, Axel called to Tidus, "Alley-oop!"

Tidus pulled back with a mammoth cry. Axel felt himself hoisted back into the car, Roxas in tow, just as Seifer pushed the door inward from the outside. The car righted itself, the cables creaking dangerously, though there wasn't very much they could do about that.

Breathing heavily, Seifer squeezed his way back into the car through a hairline crack in the door, slamming it shut behind him and promptly collapsing against it, his legs spreading across the floor to brush against Axel's.

They lay there, the four of them, a huddle of bodies on the floor, winded and wired all at once.

"Good job, team," Axel managed, "Really. Ace work all around. Proud of you guys."

"Aw, shut up," said Seifer.

"A-Axel?"

"Wha..." caught off guard, Axel looked to his right and found those bright blue eyes looking back at him.

"Roxas?"

"What...what happened? I...I feel..."

"Oh, Roxas!" he wrapped his arms around him in an embrace, "God, you're okay! You're okay, right?"

"I...I think..." he nodded, "I think so. Head kinda hurts..."

"He speaks," said Tidus, "Sure. Why not?"

Roxas looked around, confusion written on his face. Feeling he ought to explain, "So, Rox...these are our new roommates. Roommates, Rox."

"Yo," said Tidus dryly, while Seifer waved halfheartedly with one hand, wincing at once and moving to feel his heart.

"You okay, Almasy?" Axel asked.

"Fine."

"'Cuz if I knew you had a condition, I wouldn't have..."

"I'm _fine,_ " his hand moved under his tank top, and Axel saw, briefly, a flash of scar tissue. Straight, thin, a slanted line.

His blood ran cold, "Wait."

" _What_?" Seifer snapped.

"Your chest."

"I told you, I'm _fine_."

"Wait..." Axel moved forward on hands and knees.

"Look, okay, I'm sorry for what I..."

Axel pulled the collar of his tank top down, blanching. He looked up to Seifer, "That scar..."

"Look, Axel..." he didn't even sound stubborn about it, just his typical flavor of evasive, "It's not..."

Axel didn't let him finish, hurrying back to Roxas's side, "Axel, what's..."

Saying nothing, Axel lifted Roxas's hair from the back of his neck, feeling his heart thundering in his chest.

He looked from Roxas's next to Seifer's chest, seeing the same _X_ carved into their flesh.

* * *

" _Across the evening sky/All the birds are leaving..._ " Riku had by now gotten so accustomed to Judy Collins he barely even noticed that there was music playing at all.

" _But how can they know/It's time for them to go?_ "

The music had a languid, torpid effect on him. His limbs felt heavy, weighted down. He could probably sleep forever, if he were stupid enough to close his eyes.

" _Before the winter fire/I will still be dreaming..._ "

Clothes had been brought up for him. Not _his_ clothes, that hodgepodge of things he'd worn the day Pete had brought him to the Hollow and scraps he'd scrounged up in the Underworld. A pair of sweatpants, black socks, no shirt. Presumably he was supposed to keep the gray one on.

" _I have no thought of time._ "

It had been a day. A day since he'd seen Sora, since Vexen had dragged him back up here, strapped him down, locked the door.

There was no clock. No way of knowing for sure. But Riku knew. He was alone, locked up. They wanted it that way.

" _For who knows where the times goes?/Who knows where the time go_ ooooz..."

The lyrics became distorted, hollow, Judy's voice deepening, twisting and, finally, eking out to silence. In the very same second, the room went dark, the lights giving way to darkness in a fluid instant.

Riku lay there, caught off guard, for a few moments that seemed to drag into ages. His hands began to itch again, his fingers and toes to twitch, as if begging for something to happen.

' _Fortuitous. Now's our chance._ '

"Shut up."

' _When will you accept that that isn't the best rebuttal for the voice inside your head?_ ' the old man was sounding more and more _like_ an old man every time he spoke up. A sly, impossibly cunning old man who knew he was smarter than everybody else and took immense pleasure in the fact.

' _Or don't you see the opportunity here?_ '

"There's no way out," said Riku, "Remember? We... _I_ tried."

' _You wanted to sate your pithy emotional impulse, you_ tried _nothing._ '

"What the hell do you know about emotions, anyway?"

' _I know I never had much time for them. Now, do you want a taste of freedom or not?_ '

As if in answer to his question, a tiny hum resounded in the room as tiny floodlights inset near the floor came to life, like emergency runners on a plane.

' _No doubt, there'll be an investigation soon enough. Better move._ '

Riku felt his hand move of its own accord, straining against the wrist strap. He resisted, feeling that unsettling, new strength welling in him. Gritting his teeth, he moved his own hand against the binding, loosening it.

"I can figure it out," he muttered, getting to work on his other wrist.

' _Of course you can. The electrical locks should all be deactivated now. We'll have only the briefest window before they turn on the generator._ '

"How did you figure _this_ one out?" asked Riku, moving to his ankle bindings, "Don't tell me I can short circuit things with my head."

' _Don't be foolish. If I could do that, you'd never have been put into this cell in the first place. This blackout isn't_ my _doing._ '

Riku got to his feet, moving to the clothes that had been left on the sideboard. Pulling on the sweats, he asked, "So I can rip doors off their hinges, yank chandeliers from the ceiling, but I'm an idiot for asking about mental short circuiting powers."

' _Exactly. Hurry now, there isn't much time._ '

"Of course not," he eyed the socks, realizing there were no shoes. Why would there be? It's not like they expected him to be walking around anywhere. He sighed, pulling first one on, then the other.

"Why aren't there alarms? Before, when we set them off, there were sirens everywhere."

' _You assume two things that aren't so._ '

"Two things?"

' _You assume the sirens weren't effected by the outage,_ and _that we set off the first sirens to begin with. Both are false._ '

Riku paused, halfway to the door, "But...if us breaking in _didn't_ trigger the alarms..."

' _I'm not omniscient, boy. I merely know how this place runs. If I were to venture a guess, I'd name that friend of yours._ '

"Sora?"

' _Your_ friend _, not your puppy. Didn't he say he'd been here?_ '

"You were listening to all that?"

' _There's never a moment when I'm_ not _._ '

Riku began rifling through drawers, looking for supplies, anything that might come in handy in a pinch. Frustrated, he said, "If Axel was here, he's probably already gone."

' _Oh, without a doubt. And not alone, I'd wager._ '

"What? Who..."

' _You saw him. Vexen's more bothered than usual. Feckless idiot, no doubt he's making lists of others to blame in his place instead of trying to_ find _them._ '

"You seem to know him pretty well," Riku closed the drawer with a sigh, finding they'd all been kept empty of anything that wasn't cotton swabs and latex gloves. If Vexen wasn't the cautious one, his intern sure as hell was.

' _He worked for me, once._ '

"When you were CEO?"

' _Good of you to keep up. As a young man, he showed promise, but he's entirely without direction and possessed of even less sense. Unfortunate if he takes orders from you, but this does make him easy to confound. On, now._ '

Riku felt himself propelled to the door, but again he fought against it, "I can walk on my own. I managed just fine the last 18 years."

' _You think so?_ '

Riku didn't like the implications of _that_ one. He decided not to press, in case he gave Xehanort a chance to worm his way deeper in his head. He opened the door and passed out into the hallway, where those tiny lights continued, up and down the passage.

"There are no stairs," said Riku, "Just elevators."

' _Of course not. In case of catastrophe, why not leave all the best secrets buried where they can't be found?_ '

"I guess you want me to rip the elevator open with my bare hands, is that it?"

He expected some snide, snarky comment, but all he got was, ' _Well, obviously._ '

He started up the hall, "What about the others?"

' _Mercy, but you_ are _a single-minded creature, aren't you?'_

"Sora, the friend Axel was here to help...there are others. Plenty of others, we can't just leave them here."

' _You could accomplish so much, be_ so _great, if only you weren't so sentimental._ '

"You brought me here for a reason, didn't you? Why get out now?"

' _I didn't come here to be used as a lab experiment. There's pressing matters to contend with, and I have waited too long..._ '

"So this _wasn't_ supposed to be a family reunion?"

He could feel a palpable tension building in the back of his head, as if Xehanort was experiencing a purely physical reaction, entirely independent of Riku's own body.

' _Xemnas is bright, but you and he share a singular fatal flaw._ '

"Born prematurely gray?"

' _Sentiment. Now open the elevator._ '

Riku felt himself come to a stop just before the elevator doors. His fingers flexed, ran down the smooth metal doors.

"So I...rip the doors open, climb up the shaft...then what?"

' _I don't need to explain anything to you. You'll see soon enough._ '

His hands made their way to the groove between the doors and, without even thinking, Riku found himself pushing against the doors from opposite ends. It was a mammoth effort, every muscle in his body straining, his eyes forced shut.

He couldn't do this, he had to stop...he _could_ stop, couldn't he?

"It's...it's not..."

' _Oh, quit that moaning. You can and you will._ '

Slowly, deliberately, the doors began to push apart under the influence of his hands. Riku felt his knees begin to buckle beneath him.

He felt a blast of hot air on his face, the gap in the doors widening. Just a little more, a little more, and then...

And then?

"Restless again?" a low, gravely voice. Riku froze, his every nerve seeming to pinch in place.

"You're developing a habit."

Riku turned around to face the behemoth standing at the end of the hallway. Not Xaldin, someone else...

' _Lexeaus,_ ' Xehanort supplied helpfully, ' _A loyal dog, but a dog all the same._ '

"You've been shown great leniency since you've been here."

"That's a fun way to call it," said Riku.

"That will not be so any longer. We can no longer afford leniency. You may find things turn out badly for you."

Something about the way he said that gave Riku an unpleasant chill, "What happened? What's going on?"

"I tell you, I tell the other," Lexeaus drew a baton from his hip, a similar blunt instrument to the one Xaldin had used, "I'm not so stupid."

' _Stand your ground. We'll make short work of him._ '

"Oh, you are fucking _out_ of it," Riku said, forgetting himself.

Lexeaus replied, "Think that if you like," he gave the baton a tiny flick, "You'll find I'm the sanest one you'll meet in this place."

The baton expanded, like Xaldin's had, but not both ways like a lance. It fanned out to one hand, the thinner shaft with a weighty, rounded top...a cudgel, or a club.

"Worst part is, I believe you," Riku told him.

"Come quietly. You won't be getting away, in any event. Not tonight."

"Why..." Riku cocked a eyebrow, "Something happen?"

Lexeaus's expression didn't change, but his voice seemed to deepen, "Something has, and something worse will."

"Thanks for clearing that up."

Riku's mind was made. He ran for Lexeaus, back bent, remembering the way he'd slid past Xaldin. He dropped to his palms, pushed forward...

Lexeaus grabbed him by the collar with one hand, pulling back with a surprising force.

' _Fool, what have you done? We might've had the door open by now..._ '

"Shut _up_!" Riku reached for Lexeaus's wrist, twisting it around sharply before, using his arm as leverage, vaulting over Lexeaus's head...

Lexeaus swung the club, like a baseball bat. It connected with Riku's gut, he came up against the ceiling, saw stars, began to fall back down.

In a split second, he'd mustered up the strength to grab for Lexeaus's club, dragging it down and, with an agility he didn't know he possessed (and, probably, _hadn't_ possessed until very recently) wrapped his legs around Lexeaus's neck, tugging his collar back with one hand.

Lexeaus swung the club, trying to brush Riku off like a fly. Riku anticipated this, let go at just the right moment. The club brushed past Lexeaus's head and came up against the wall.

Which was all he needed. Riku reached up, grabbed the club, wresting it from Lexeaus's hands and, in the next second, swung it at his legs, causing him to fall to the floor with a heavy thud.

"No hard feelings," he told him, raising the club and bringing it down on Lexeaus's back. Not enough to knock him out...Riku wasn't sure if he _could_ do that...but enough to severely daze him.

' _Well done. You're learning._ '

"You're taking credit for that?"

' _Boy, I've been in your head since the second the old woman pulled you squalling into this world. I can take credit for_ everything _._ '

"Yeah, well..." Riku paused in front of the _other_ elevator doors, "Don't."

' _What're you doing? This isn't the right..._ '

Riku ignored him, shoving his fingers into the groove between doors and starting to push. Maybe it was his recent bit of experience in the matter, but it didn't seem as difficult this time.

' _Boy, there is no time. There's nothing you can do for your pet in any..._ '

"He is _not_..." Riku let out a short cry, feeling the doors part under the force of his hands "...my pet."

A blast of chilly, stale air hit him in the face. The elevator shaft was empty, a dark, musty channel plunging right down. He could make out the cords leading down to the elevator car in the dark.

' _You'll only regret this in time, let me..._ '

He felt his leg begin to bend, his body to turn.

"Not that easy," he told Xehanort, "I got on just fine _without_ you pulling my strings all these years."

' _Oh, did you? What's this talk of strings? There are no_ strings _, boy, I'm not some interloper. I_ am _you. And I make you do_ nothing _. Only awaken impulses of things you've_ thought _about doing._ '

A short pause, Riku could hear a tiny chuckle sharp as a knife in his ears, ' _I had my problems with the old crone, but I never_ hated _her enough to do what_ you _did to her._ '

"That's..." Riku felt his blood run cold, "That's not... _you_...I know for a fact, it wasn't _me,_ I couldn't even think, I..."

' _You did what you wanted to do. Trust that if_ I _was really in charge, you'd have made a cleaner job of it._ '

"You're lying. That's not...that can't be..."

' _Explain something to me, boy...what would I_ ever _expect to get from_ lying _to you? It would be as good as lying to my face in the mirror_. _Now, come, there isn't much_...'

Riku jumped into the elevator shaft, refusing to listen another second more to anything Xehanort wanted to tell him.

He grabbed at once to the thick elevator cord, sliding down toward the bottom in a short instant, landing on his stocking feet on the top of the elevator.

' _You're a willful idiot._ '

"If I'm following along correctly, that means you are too," Riku got down on one knee, struggling with the emergency hatch on the top, reminded suddenly of the one in the Underworld that he and Sora had opened, leading out to the train tracks.

The lab... His birthplace.

He experienced another flash of memory. A hazy blur, the trapdoor in the ceiling above, the weight of chains on his ankles, his legs.

" _We're going to be alright,_ " a firm, strong promise. He'd never sounded so confident about anything, "You're _going to be alright. I swear, I won't let anything happen to you._ "

A woman's gasps, the crunching of bone between his fingers, the ringing bang of a gunshot.

He'd died there too, and been born minutes later.

But there was no use in thinking about it. Riku pushed the thoughts aside, tried to root himself back in the moment. Lexeaus was still awake, he was probably getting help. Xehanort had a point...there was no time, and less every second.

He pulled the hatch from its spot and swung his legs through to jump into the elevator...

" _Oomph!_ " a muffled yelp from a body just below and, now, under him.

"Oh my God..." Riku panted, shaking his hair out of his eyes. He couldn't really see much of the elevator around him, but he could feel from the cold air that the doors out to the big round room had already been opened, somehow.

"Are you...you okay?"

The guy he'd landed on was wild-eyed and apologetic at once, "I'm sorry. Sorry, man, really, I just...I was just, you know, lights went out, the doors opened. I thought, 'Hey, maybe something's up', I wasn't gonna try anything, seriously, I'd never..."

" _What?_ "

The guy stopped short, eyes widening, "Oh shit."

"What? Oh shit _what_?"

"I'm lucid!" he yelped, "I mean, I'm not...I'm not supposed to be lucid. And...and I'm being lucid now."

"If you say so," Riku said carefully, not entirely convinced.

"Aw, they're gonna kill her... All I had to do, all I had to do was just _not be lucid_! That was it, man. That was it, and now I'm running around being...being _lucid_ and stuff, and hell, it's probably already on camera, and now she's gonna die..."

"Wait, _who_? Who's going to die?"

"My sister, man," he shook sweat-matted locks of blond hair from his eyes, thin fingers shaking, "My sister. All I had to do was...was act nuts and shit, and then it was all gonna be fine, but now, I'm _lucid_ and you just saw..."

"Hey, hey, it's...it's alright," Riku reached forward, put a placating hand on the guy's shoulder, "I'm not gonna tell anyone, man. Promise."

"Really?" he smiled, looking like he might just pass out. He looked kinda sick. Riku wondered how long he'd been stuck down here.

"Yeah...yeah, really," Riku looked him up and down, taking notice of his ratty jeans, bare feet, and the faded cerulean teeshirt on which was crudely stenciled a compass rose and some words he couldn't quite read in the dark.

"You're the best. So...what, you here to rescue us?"

"Um...well..." Riku was caught off guard, half-expecting Xehanort to chime in with some snide remark, but none came, "Yeah. Yeah, of course."

He let out a short whoop, pumping his fist, "Awesome. Hey, I'm...I'm Demyx."

"Demyx?" he nodded, "Riku."

"Riku..." his brow furrowed, as if in recognition, "Hey, are you..."

"You'd be better off not knowing," rumbled a voice.

Riku turned behind him to the towering figure of Lexeaus, peering down at them through the opening in the hatch.

"You were given instructions," he said flatly.

"Yeah...yeah, I know. I just...the lights went out, and all the locks opened. I...I thought maybe..."

"You shouldn't have thought."

Riku wasn't entirely sure what Lexeaus did next. Only that he flicked his finger toward some kind of remote or switch or something at his side. The elevator doors closed behind them and, in the next moment, there was a bright flash, a bang, a smell of sulfur.

And then nothing.

* * *

His feet thudding against a solid floor, the sounds echoing in the dark. The bright colors of innumerable stained glass panels the only thing to light his way on this single-minded, endless course to nowhere.

His quarry was still ahead of him, always ahead, back to him, hood raised over his face.

Sora wanted to call out to him, but his voice could not come to him. Inconvenient thing about dreams, even weird, recurring semi-prophetic dreams. You felt like everything was significant, full of meaning, and meanwhile you're just as helpless to understand anything as when you're awake.

In this case, even more so. And he was pretty helpless awake too.

"Hey!" he tried. He couldn't feel the word leave his lungs, but he could still _hear_ it. Stupid dream crap. He quickened his pace, aware of whistling noise, a rumbling of some kind beneath his feet beyond the windows. The colors on the floor began to distort, change, like he'd been displaced into an oversize lava lamp.

"Please!" he tried again, and this time he _could_ feel himself speaking, even as the figure he was chasing fled farther and farther away, "Please, I just...I just want..."

" _Sora!_ " the floor shook again, "Sora, come on!"

"Wh-what?"

The figure was gone, the windows shaking, cracking. A thunderous roar from overhead. Somewhere up above, an invisible ceiling was quaking, bright light flooding down on him...

He shut his eyes against the blinding light, only to find he was awake, breathing raggedly, back in his metal freezer...

With someone standing right over him.

"You good, Lockpick? Cause I could slap you if you want."

In the darkness, Sora could only just make out a kid around his age, pale skin, messy ginger hair, wearing baggy jeans, a ratty tank top. Scrawny arms held him by his own shirt, mid-shake from the look of it.

Sora stared at him, "... _Neku_?"

"Thought you'd be taller."

"What are you...how..." he raised his head enough to glimpse the door hanging open just over his neighbor's shoulder, "You opened the door?"

"If I could've, I would've been outta here before you ever got a chance to meet me," he turned his head back to the open exit, "Locks opened all around the place. Either you're a bigger key than you thought, or these guys have a bigger problem than you and me to deal with."

Sora sat up, struggling to his feet. He glowered at Neku, who seemed too busy staring out the doorway to notice and give a hand or anything like that.

"So...we can just _go_?"

"If we're quick, yeah," he looked Sora up and down, "How's your leg?"

"Wha..." Sora looked down at his hurt leg, the healed scar there from Hellhound No. He Couldn't Remember, "Oh, yeah, it's...it's fine, thanks for..."

"So you can run?"

"Well...yeah. Yeah, probably. I...I kinda jumped off a train before this thing was even healed, so..."

"That's great. Come on." He hurried out into the 'drum' outside. Sora followed, just being able to _move_ such a foreign, freeing feeling.

Neku was right. The other doors around the circle were all hanging open, exposing shadowy crevices beyond. It was all silent, dead quiet.

"Where are they?" Sora asked.

"Where's who?" Neku kept moving, not even turning around.

"The...the girls! They were all...they were all crying last night, I heard them..."

"They're still there," said Neku, "Probably."

"But..."

"Do you want to get out or not?"

Sora hesitated, looking around. He could feel, or maybe he was only imagining he felt, a wind whistling in his ears.

"You've got any ideas?" he asked eventually.

"Call it a theory," Neku continued over to the _last_ set of open doors leading, not into a cell, but into...

"The elevator," Sora leaned into the shadowy, cold shaft, turning his face up to glimpse the outline of the car, stalled somewhere up above, "What..."

"Probably best not to question it," Neku nodded down below, "There."

Sora followed his gaze. There was a considerable empty space at the bottom of the shaft just below the doorway. He could just make out a rectangular gap in the side...an air duct.

"You're kidding?"

"You've got a better idea? You said you wanted to get out, right?"

"Well...well, yeah, but..." he trialed off, "There are...there's other people, we can't just..."

"This Riku guy, right?" Neku cocked an eyebrow, "God, you _are_ easy..."

"Shut up!" Sora protested, "It's not...I can't just..." he stopped, "You were listening to us, right?"

"Didn't have much of a choice."

"Then you know. He saved my life, more than once. I don't like it, but it happened. And I can't just..."

"You can't leave him? Of course not. But tell me something, Lockpick, what the hell can you do for him _here_ that you can't do better on the outside?"

Sora blinked, "I don't...he's..."

"I get it. You've got people. Believe it or not, I've got them too," he reached out with one hand, "Maybe you wanna meet 'em."

Sora looked at his hand, then back into his eyes, "Neku..."

"You don't have to trust me. But I'm going, one way or the other."

Sora hesitated. He could feel a pulsing, steady throbbing in his head. He still couldn't close his eyes without thinking of stained glass, footsteps on stone.

At last, he took Neku's hand, "You'd better know what you're doing."

"I do. Better than you, at least."

And they jumped down from the ledge, and into the dark.

* * *

The world went dark with a breathless rapidity, all the energy in the room seeming to be both sucked out and charged with an electric energy all at once.

All around the lobby, voices hushed. A few people let out short screams or exclamations of surprise. Celeste whirled on her heel, pressing her hand to her mouth.

Behind her, Lucrecia muttered, "Power failure?"

"In a hospital?"

"It's been known to happen," she wrapped her arms around herself as if to ward off a chill nobody else could feel, "But still..."

"It stormed two nights ago, nothing happened. The night Aerith..."

A low, yet resounding boom echoed through the lobby, tiny lights coming on over all the archways, by the stairs. Emergency power.

"Do you think something's happened?" asked Celeste.

"Like what?" Lucrecia's voice was muted, as if to even think about it frightened her.

"I don't know...something," she shrugged, "Aren't hospitals supposed to have reinforced power or...or something?"

"Generators, sure, but..."

"But for the lights to just go out..."

There was another noise, a muffled bang. Somebody screamed. The next second, white lights began flashing up and down the room, alarm sirens blaring out.

Celeste looked at Lucrecia, seeing her own startled, dawning fear reflected in her face.

"Everybody please, remain calm," someone was speaking, perhaps an orderly, an administrator, _someone_ in charge, "If you'd just make your way to the exits in an orderly fashion..."

"They're evacuating," said Lucrecia, eyes widening, "Something must have..." she stopped, paling.

Celeste didn't need to ask her what she meant. She whirled on her heel, starting off across the lobby, pushing through the confused, muted masses.

"Celeste? Celeste!" Lucrecia was following her, "You can't..."

But she kept on anyway, into the stairwell.

"Which floor is Intensive Care?" she asked.

"11," Lucrecia panted, "But..."

She hurried up the stairs, encountering others going the opposite direction. Several people tried to grab her, stop her. She ignored them. Her heart was hammering in her chest. More than once she stumbled and had to catch herself on the railing.

She reached Intensive Care, all but falling from the landing into the corridor. There were still people up here, huddled in short crowds, whispering, muttering, _crying_...

"Ma'am?" somebody called after her, "Ma'am, you shouldn't..."

But Celeste ignored her, running on to the right room, finding the door not just open, but knocked down.

Her blood turned to ice.

Moving with a slow determination, Celeste paused in the doorway, and beheld the scene carefully laid out before her.

Her foot squelched against the tiled floor. She drew it back, and it came away, red and wet.

Her breath short, Celeste raised her eyes to the hospital bed to behold the figure lying in it, spread-eagle, clothes cut from her body, a by now all-too-familiar _X_ carved across her front, blood oozing from the gashes over either side to pool around the bed.

She felt footsteps approach from behind her, and heard Lucrecia let out a low wail, "Oh no...Oh God, no."

Her words subsided into sobs. Celeste couldn't feel tears on her own lashes. Just a hollow emptiness, as she looked from the old woman, dead in the bed before her, to the young girl huddled in the corner, hospital gown stained red with blood, rocking back and forth, eyes sparkling with tears she could not cry, muttering soundless words in a ceaseless mantra.

* * *

 **A/N** : Things would appear to be coming to a head, yes? My initial thought was to do what happened when Aerith was killed and do a two-week time break before Chapter 31, but then I realized it would probably be best to save any such hiatus until after next chapter for...reasons that will only be apparent once you've read it.

So, as ever, Chapter 31 will be up next Friday. Until then...


	31. (Un?)necessary Roughness

Chapter 31, (Un?)necessary Roughness

 **A/N:** Welcome back! You'll find that even though I framed last chapter as this big event thing, with the blackout effecting multiple people in different ways, I think you'll find that this chapter manages to be punchier anyway.

As far as the timeline is concerned, it takes place on the same night, in some places overlapping with the events of Chapter 30, and eventually progressing past them.

I've waited a _long_ time for this particular episode. So...hope you enjoy it!

* * *

It came upon him in a sudden, burning flash. More intense than any that had come before. A burning, hot-cold sensation that tore through every inch of his body, electrified him from his head to his feet.

He remembered only a piercing cry, a muffled expletive from right beside him.

 _No, no not now. Not_ now _, you can't...you have to get together, keep control..._

As if he had any control over this. Any say in it at all.

There was a screech of tires on asphalt, a stink of burning rubber. He couldn't open his eyes, he couldn't move, he could do nothin at all but sit, paralyzed, as his body pulled itself apart...

"Jesus Christ!" her voice, urgent, curt, "Oh my _God_..."

She was bent over him, he could feel her hand on his face, his brow, his chest...

He forced his eyes open to look at her, taking in brown eyes, that mass of brown hair. For half a second that felt like an eternity, he saw _her_ , Rinoa, kneeling over him, smiling softly, her immortal sympathy ebbing off her like some divine aura.

She slapped him, hard. Air flooded into his lungs with a beautiful, searing agony as the world smashed back into focus before his eyes.

"You okay?"

Squall grimaced, looking Tifa up and down, "It's...it's just you."

"Yeah, and her eyes are up here."

Squall hadn't realized his attention was wandering, looking up up into her eyes as he sat up in the passenger seat of the patrol car, "Sorry, I..."

"You had a goddamn attack is what you had. What the hell was that?"

Squall, barely conscious of the fact, moved his hand to his chest to feel the still warm skin underneath his shirt.

 _Four. Four down and nine to go. Dammit, Seifer..._

But at least this proved he was alive. Alive and apparently compromising them for the second time since he'd decided to take matters into his own hands.

"Nothing," he answered Tifa at last, "I'm fine."

"Like hell, you are!" she brushed some hair from her brow, looking out the window of the car as if to ascertain that they were not, in fact, being ambushed, "What was it, like a heart attack?"

Squall stared at her, "I. Am. _Fine._ "

"I. Am. Not. An. Idiot," she shrugged, "Look, we're stuck together, so the least you can do..."

"If it concerned you, Tifa, I'd tell you."

"Oh, so it _doesn't_ concern me, that's it?"

"That's the gist of it, yeah."

"You dropping dead the second things get heated _kinda_ concerns me, doesn't it?"

"Well, it's a good thing it wasn't heated, then."

"Is it drugs?"

Squall glowered, " _Drugs_?"

"Don't sound so surprised."

"Surprised that you're accusing me of being a junkie?"

"You worked the undercover beat for years, half those guys go for the hard stuff eventually..."

"I busted up a drug ring."

"Believe me, I know," she crossed her arms, "Look, I'm just asking."

Squall sighed, "I don't do drugs."

He wasn't sure whether he'd convinced her or not. He didn't really care very much either, in point of fact. But she didn't press him any further, just shaking her head with a sigh and turning off the car's engine.

"What, we're there, already?"

"Wasn't a long trip, was it?" she opened the door on her side.

Squall didn't give her the satisfaction of taking umbrage at the stupid joke, following her out and getting unevenly to his feet.

"I still think this is a waste of time," he told her.

"Maybe. But all the killers, bikers and babysnatchers in the world won't panic the public as much as the lights being out. We oughta at least make sure it's nothing...nefarious."

"Don't we pay an electric bill for a reason?" Squall asked, following Tifa up the narrow path toward the long, low figure of the Radiant County Power Grid.

"I know _I_ do."

"Electric company didn't radio in?"

"Harvey tried reaching out. No answer. Might be they can't work a C.B. Or something considerably uglier."

"You know, a lot of people don't know how to use a radio, right?"

Tifa shrugged, "I've just...got a feeling, right?"

"A feeling," he nodded, "Women's intuition?"

Tifa stopped in place, putting her hands on her hips, " _Cop_ intuition, as a matter of fact. What, you've never just followed your gut on the job?"

"A few times. It's pretty overrated."

Either she didn't get it, or she was choosing not to, "But has your gut ever been _wrong_?"

His own words came ringing back to him, clear as if they were being spoken into his ear, " _Rinoa, you go back for him, it's all over._ _We've gotten this far, you'll have us both screwed._ "

A later, more clinical voice, " _We've accounted for all the dead. You're going to want to prepare yourself._ "

Her body, still and cold on that slab, the yellow feather placed neatly over a blood-drenched front.

" _A calling card?_ " he'd barely even heard his own voice, felt it, felt anything.

" _A trophy. The...champion, whenever he wins a match, he places a feather..._ "

" _Champion?_ "

The examiner had understood what he meant, and merely shook his head, " _I'm sorry, Squall. Nobody's talking._ "

"Let me ask you something," Tifa was saying.

"I'm not doing bath salts, either. So you can calm down."

"You like this with Yuffie?"

"Like _what_ , exactly?"

"Like... _this_. A big ol' heaping plate of broody with a side serving of condescending prick."

"Have I been condescending?"

"There!" she stopped, pointing at his face, "Christ, Saix was the _exact_ same..." she stopped herself, lowering her hand, "You know, I find it hard to believe."

"Do I even want to know _what_?"

"That you're always like this. Yuffie thinks you hung the goddamn moon..."

"She doesn't," he said automatically, "Does she?"

Tifa smirked, "Oh yeah, whole time she was at the station, it was Squall this, Leon that. You were her favorite story and her favorite punchline all rolled up in one."

"I'm a punchline, am I?" but he couldn't help but smile, just a little.

"I promised I wouldn't tell," Tifa smirked, "You can get her to spill when we find her."

Squall rolled his eyes. Tifa kept going, "So it isn't a sex thing."

" _What?_ "

"Well, gender. Because Yuffie clearly thinks you're cool. So it must be about me."

"Must it?"

"Well, unless you were _are_ a cold-shouldered robot with everybody..."

"You ever consider it's just you?"

Tifa raised her eyebrows, "Just me, huh?"

"You're the one that keeps bringing it up."

"I like to know who I'm working with. Establishes trust."

"Trust," he repeated.

"You trust your partners, don't you?"

Squall thought at once of Seifer, despite himself. His scar seeming to prickle at the very notion. Then, behind Seifer, Saix. Not a partner by any means, but a good cop. A friend. Or at least someone who seemed to get it more than the others had. Even now, it was hard to imagine him holding a gun on anybody, stealing a car, driving off into the night...

And finally, Yuffie. Ten to one, that's who Tifa actually meant what she asked. If anything, he could trust Yuffie. Even if, as it transpired, she couldn't quite count on him.

"I trust who I have to trust."

"What a carefully coordinated response. Are we being recorded?"

He glared at her, "You can trust me."

She cocked an eyebrow, "And you can trust me. For as long as this sorry charade keeps going."

They reached the crest of the hill, the edge of the high, barbed wire fence where a big placard advertised, in bright yellow letters, ' _RADIANT COUNTY POWER GRID- NO TRESPASSING BEYOND THIS POINT'._

"You ever been here before?" asked Squall.

"Field trip in the fourth grade," Tifa shrugged, "Gotta love the public school system."

Determined to get back to the point, Squall clarified, in a measured tone, "The _entrance_? Do you know where it is?"

"Oh..." she scratched idly at the back of her neck, "There's some kind of gate or something around the side."

"Fine," Squall started moving, but was stopped by Tifa's hand on his arm.

"What are you doing?"

He stared at her, "Looking for the gate."

"That's the main entrance."

"That's why I asked about it."

"It's not safe! They could be watching it."

"Who is _they_?"

"Well, that's what we're here to find out, isn't it?"

Squall sighed, "Fine. What's your plan, then?"

She nodded to the top of the fence, the barbed wire lining the top, "We climb."

Squall eyes the wire, skeptically, "Can you make it?"

She scoffed, "Can _you_?"

Without further ado, Tifa started scaling the fence, moving with an admitted deftness hand over foot along the mesh. When she reached the top, she shed her jacket to weigh down on the wire, climbing over and coming to land neatly on the other side.

"Alright, you next!"

He smiled thinly at her, if only to communicate that he did, in fact, understand how this whole thing worked. With some trepidation, he began climbing up after her, fingers having some difficult getting purchase in the tiny gaps of the fence.

"Take your time!" Tifa told him.

He ignored that, climbing over her jacket and dropping to the ground, tossing the garment back to her.

"We could've just left it there for the way back," said Tifa.

Squall stared at her. She sighed, "Gee, thanks, Officer."

"Don't mention it."

They moved quietly through the grid, past tall pylons, outlined starkly in the dark like skeletal giants.

"Huh," said Tifa at one point.

Squall turned to see what was up and sighed, "We could've just walked around the fence."

Tifa looked from him to the sizable, man-sized hole cut into the fence, "Well, this _proves_ there were people here. At...some point."

"Clean job," Squall looked the thing over, "Probably used wire cutters."

Tifa looked around, "So...we're thinking...what, exactly?"

"I think you know."

"Yeah, well, I asked so we could _talk_ about it..."

He turned on his heel before she could finish, starting across deeper into the grid. Between the pylons, certain things were more obvious. There were footprints in the hard packed soil. Squall noted Tifa studying them, and nodded at her, indicating the crisscrossing, looping pattern of the tracks.

"More than one person."

"Man. More than one man."

He eyed her. She sighed, "There's at least, _two_ size elevens here. You _are_ a detective, right?"

He looked from the tracks to her, "One of them is eleven and a half."

She rolled her eyes, but they kept on, moving carefully between the pylons, to the far end, where, in normal conditions, turbines would be spinning to keep the electricity running. Of course, they found the situation very different. Not only were the turbines all still, but...

"Jesus," Tifa looked the wreckage over, "Someone had it out for this place."

"They were thorough," Squall agreed, "Used clubs, maybe sledgehammers."

"This was professional," said Tifa, and Squall nodded.

""You take out the power for two reasons. To get noticed..."

"And to provoke chaos," Tifa crossed her arms, "Damage like this...it'll be a while before everything is up and running again."

"We should get back to the car," said Squall, "Radio in to Harvey, let him know how it all looks."

"Won't he be thrill..."

Squall hushed her. Tifa raised her eyebrows, "Excuse me?"

He glared at her and she quieted down. The noise sounded out again. A steady clacking. Like footsteps on metal. Squall thought he glimpsed a shadow flit across one of the pylons.

They looked at each other, Squall detecting the question in Tifa's eyes. He nodded, and they split up, going with a careful deliberation between the metal towers.

Squall reached to feel his sidearm, drawing it to hold out in front of him. There was a prickling on the back of his neck, the feeling of being watched.

He didn't like this. Everything seemed to be happening at once, and in a thousand places all at the same instant. The disappearances, the Underworld, yellow bird, black bird, the dead woman naked on the wall of her apartment, the _X_ on her chest, the _X_ on his...

A flash of something in the darkness, bright, green,. Squall let out a cry, reached for his gun.

"Squall?" Tifa called out, alarmed, "Squall, what's..."

She was at his side in a second, sidearm drawn. It was only a second before she bursts into laughter.

Squall sighed, lowering his weapon, "Okay."

"Oh my _God_..."

"It's not that funny..."

"You are just..."

"It's over now, okay, I was surprised, it's just..."

"It's a _cat_!" Tifa indicated the black cat curled up sleepily at the foot of the nearest pylon, bright green eyes stark in the darkness, "You almost shot a _cat_."

"I didn't _almost_ do anything. I was just...surprised."

"You've been doing this how many years?"

"You done laughing?"

Tifa shrugged, turning to the cat, "Sorry baby...Squally's just a little high strung," she scratched the cat behind the ears.

"Watch out, it might be feral..."

The cat closed its eyes and purred. Tifa grinned at it, "Squally thinks you're feral. Squally's just a big old grumpy gus..."

"Tifa..."

"I think Squally needs a personality transplant, don't you?"

"Tifa. The domestic terror attack, please?"

She straightened up, pouting at him, "You're no fun."

The cat purred, content, closing its eyes to sleep. Tifa shook her hair out, "So...we're alone?"

"So it would..." he trailed off, "Wait."

Tifa tensed, "What now?"

He didn't respond right away, hurrying his pace across the yard to the turbine the farthest way across the space.

"Found something?"

He wrested the tiny bit of fabric from the stalled turbine blades, turning it so Tifa could see the silver funnel cloud stitched into the leather.

"Is that..." began Tifa.

Squall nodded, "We're looking at a biker."

* * *

Sounds were oddly muted in the interrogation room. Celeste supposed that was the point. The rest of the world had to be filtered, out of sight, out of mind.

She was sure she wouldn't notice the world even if she could. Everything felt numb, drained, stunned. She could not close her eyes without seeing Amphitrite sprawled out on the bed, covered with blood, eyes open and staring.

Aerith had been displayed, like a hanging crucifix for them to find. But Amphitrite had been slaughtered. There was no attention to detail, to some perverse artistic style. The only thing on display had been brutality, and that seemed to just come easily to her killer.

Celeste had lost track of time, how many hours she'd been here. At least there was some light, though, muted as it was, now that the station's generator had been turned on. The march of time was at least more apparent.

Lucrecia had been taken with her to the station, she remembered that. Maybe they'd been speaking to _her_ all this time? She didn't know. She found she couldn't think of anything without feeling her breath thin in her lungs.

There was a sudden commotion from right outside the interrogation room. Celeste lifted her head. Raised voices, two men, it sounded like. Arguing about something, one trying to calm the other down. She found herself looking at the door, tensing as if waiting for some final blow to come down.

But there was no blow, no attack. The door opened with a surprising gentleness, and it was one man, not two, that came in to see her.

"Well, hiya," he was a tall, lanky fellow in a worn-out, much patched over black suit. As he entered, he doffed his hat, a ratty flat-cap in a dark bluish green color, "Now, you must be...er...Selene?"

"Oh. No, actually..."

"Cherry?"

She smiled, despite herself, "Sorry. It's..."

"Celeste?"

She nodded, "Yes. I'm Celeste."

"Thought it were something like that," he extended a hand to her, "Name's Guffstein."

Celeste blinked, "Guffstein?"

"Gus Guffstein. Kinda twists your tongue around, huh?" he smiled toothily, "Most folks call me Goofy."

"...Goofy," Celeste nodded, trying to curb her surprise.

"It's sorta a joke around the Bureau," he answered the unasked question, "It's Special Agent Guffstein, FBI."

"Oh. I...I didn't realize..."

"The happenings happening in your neck of the woods sure got our attention. We'd have been sent in even if it wasn't for what happened at the hospital tonight."

He pulled the chair opposite Celeste's over and sat down in it, "You want a cup of coffee?"

"It's...it's 3:00 AM."

"Breath mint?" he produced a tiny tin of Altoids, which Celeste looked at in bemusement.

"No...no, thank..."

"Just that's it normal, not knowing what to say. You've had a scare."

Celeste nodded, "You could say that. A few scares, really. In succession."

"Your son? Right," he took on a sympathetic cast, sighing heavily, "Worst thing in the world, being away from your kiddo, isn't it?"

"I'd say I haven't been able to stop thinking about him, but..." she sighed, "Well, it just seems like every time I _don't_ think about him, something..." her voice broke and she shrugged "...something awful happens."

Goofy nodded, "You were her friend?"

"I...I'm not sure if 'friend' is the right word. My son is dating her granddaughter. Then they both disappeared and..." she shrugged, "I couldn't keep from seeing her. But she was...she was never frightened. Or if she was, she was very good at hiding it. It was always like Kairi was just...out for the day, on a trip or something. And she'd come back. There was no reason to worry. I never really thought about it, but...but that takes a lot of strength."

She was aware Goofy hadn't asked any questions yet. But he didn't seem to be preparing any, just looking at her with an uncommon earnestness, loudly sucking on an Altoid he must have grabbed while she was talking.

Somehow, the noise was reassuring. Celeste didn't know what that said about her.

"And then Namine showed up. And Amphitrite...she changed. Well, how could you not? Your dead daughter turns up, no memory of the last five years of her life, not knowing where she came from or what happened to her...suddenly she was nervous. Defensive. She even said she...she knew it was impossible, but that didn't change that it _happened_."

More sucking. Celeste raised her eye to see Goofy just sitting there, not taking notes, or recording what she was saying. He looked at her with a vacant smile on his face, hands folded on the table in front of him.

"Is Namine okay?" she asked finally.

Goofy sighed, "Little girl's been through it. Last I heard she wasn't saying much."

"But...she's safe?"

"Ma'am, I don't think _anybody_ would feel safe after seeing a thing like that."

Celeste moved around in her seat, "I don't understand this. It sounds stupid for me to even talk about it, but...it just makes no sense to me. All of these things, these...these insane things that have been happening, they just seem to come out of nowhere and...and there's no rhyme or reason to...to any of it. I feel like there's something I'm missing. Some missing piece, something that will make it all click. It...it has to be connected, right? These things, they...they can't all be unrelated?"

Goofy didn't say anything at first, finally saying, "Well...what do _you_ think?"

"What do...what do _I_ think?"

He nodded curtly, that smile still on his face. Celeste sighed, "I...I think Namine was in trouble. I don't know if she is Namine, really, or...or where she came from. But I think she was running away. And that whatever she was running away from...that's where my son is."

She shook her head, "And I can't keep waiting. I can't, I'm sorry. Every day I sit around and worry, something else happens. Two innocent women are dead, people are still missing, and every day some new horror happens. And my son is still out there, alone and scared and _wondering_ why his mother isn't..."

She bent her head down, feeling the tears escape.

"I...I'm a failure," she said at last, "A failure as a friend, as a mother. I never should've let myself think I was ready. _Never_. Look what's happened now..."

"Aw, now don't be sad..." Goofy said with a heartrending earnestness, "It's not your fault this all happened."

"My son?" she looked up at him, eyes wet, "It's my job to look after him, take care of him... I failed."

Goofy sighed, "No easy job, raising boys."

"You're a father? So you must know how it feels."

"Well...my boy's never been missing," Goofy said honestly, "But I know if he ever was, I wouldn't know how to fall out of bed in the morning."

"I used to have nightmares, about losing Sora. Waking up in the middle of the night thinking he'd vanished, that I'd never see him again... And now that it's happened, now that he's gone..." she looked at him, "I have never felt so useless in my life."

"We'll see about that!" the door swung inward with a sharp slam, admitting a diminutive figure wearing a similar, if more taken care of suit to Goofy's. His face was thin and pointed, his brow furrowed in a perpetual scowl. He crossed the room in a series of sweeping, angry strides, slamming both hands down on the table with a ferocity that fair made Celeste jump.

"Sorry, but if I let this therapy go on any longer, I'm gonna have to charge you."

Celeste leaned back in her seat, unable to hide an aghast expression from her face.

"Donald..." Goofy began.

"What did we say?" Donald barked.

"She was crying..."

" _I_ was crying watching that act!" he indicated the window, "We _don't_ comfort the witness."

"Now, she doesn't mean any..."

Donald let out a short, rattling scream, and Goofy cut himself off, looking at Celeste apologetically. Celeste stared as Donald shook his jacket out, releasing a pungent odor of cigarette smoke.

"You know why you're here?" he asked her curtly.

"I...I saw my friend cut open next to her daughter?" she said mutely.

"And..."

Celeste stared, "I'm sorry?"

He leaned forward, scowl deepening, "You big palooka, you didn't _spell it out_?"

"Excuse me..."

But it transpired that hadn't been addressing her. Goofy reddened, "Well, Donald, like I told you, she was upset, and I didn't think it would be very gentleman like to..."

"You're an FBI agent, not a sensitivity trainer!" he turned back to Celeste, "Two nights ago, you happened to be a guest at a _different_ murder scene. Similar M.O."

"Aerith," Celeste nodded, "Yes, they were...they were killed the same way."

"Two dead women and you're the link between them. You know what that tells me?"

Remembering her dignity, Celeste sat up a little straighter, "Those two _women_ were friends of mine."

"Well, I'm sure they were," said Goofy gently, "But you gotta admit, there's something in you being at both..."

"Aerith and Amphitrite barely knew each other," she said.

Donald sighed tremendously, "You've got _no_ idea what's going on here, do you?"

Celeste thought of several sharp retorts to that, but dropped them all, "I'm afraid not."

Donald and Goofy exchanged a significant look before Donald said, with a new gravity in his voice, "I don't have to spell this out for you, but you'll have noticed there's a serial killer loose in your town."

"I have, actually," said Celeste thinly, "But I'm afraid I don't..."

But she stopped herself, realizing what she was saying wasn't exactly true. She _did_ know, or at least had some idea. Hadn't she only been talking about it with Milo this morning?

"There _is_ a connection," she said at last, despite herself, remembering the letter, remembering its warnings and deciding, then and there, that it didn't matter. Not anymore. They were already too fargone.

"Aerith had a boyfriend," she said finally, "A man named Cloud. She hadn't seen him in many years. Cloud's mother is Lucrecia Fair," she looked from Donald to Goofy, "She was at the hospital with us tonight. Maybe you've already spoken with her."

Neither of them gave any indication one way or the other on that. She sighed, continuing, "Lucrecia used to work at _X_ -Corp while Ansem was the CEO. And Amphitrite is...she _was_..."

"Ansem's wife?" asked Goofy.

"Well...his widow. Apparently, Ansem hired Lucrecia personally," she leaned back, "There. You wanted a connection, there it is."

Goofy cleared his throat, making curious motions with his eyebrows. Donald, for his part, looked summarily unimpressed, " _X_ -Corp, that's an X, same as those cuts, huh? Really something."

"Well, I..." she trialed off, "I hadn't really thought of it that..."

"You think we didn't already know all this?" he leaned over the table.

That was it. Celeste got to her feet, "I'm sure I don't know. You're so intent on me telling you everything I can possibly remember..."

"I told you," Donald turned to Goofy, "The woman knows nothing. Waste of time..."

"Waste of _time_?" she demanded, "You're FBI investigators, you're here to investigate! How is questioning me wasting your _time_?"

"Listen, lady, just...just calm down..."

"I haven't slept in three days!" she screamed, "Everybody who's ever cared about me is dead or missing, and I haven't been able to lift a _finger_ to help them! I'm very sorry Agent..."

"Duckworth," offered Goofy.

"Don't tell her that!"

"Well, Donald, it's in the public leopard."

" _Record_!"

"Gawrsh, Donald, I know, I'm just very flustered as it is..."

"Record," Celeste stopped, her hand halfway to her purse, "Record. Oh my God."

"What is it now?" Donald looked at her sharply.

"Hospital records. A visitors' log..."

"I know what it is, yes."

"Have you read it?"

"Ma'am, this might surprise you, but my partner and I didn't start this job yesterday. It was the first thing we looked at, the girl had no visitors except you, her mother and some girl."

Celeste stopped, "But...but..."

"Seffie something, horrible handwriting, don't really..."

"There was somebody else," said Celeste urgently, "Xemnas, the CEO of _X_ -Corp."

Donald stopped short, and Goofy's eyes widened pronouncedly.

"He visited her at least once before...yesterday, I think. And...and he was at the hospital earlier, but I don't know if he saw Namine or not. When Amphitrite found out, she ran off..." she broke off, saying in a weaker voice, "I never saw her again."

They all stood there, here on one side of the table, Donald and Goofy on the other, making a lopsided triangle. At last, Goofy said, "You're sure it was Xemnas?"

"Of course I'm sure, I...I met him. On the way out of the building."

Donald sighed, "We looked at the record. There's nothing saying he was ever there."

* * *

With the engine silenced, the night was quiet, all but for the sound of the bird warbling indistinctly in the back seat.

"We good?" Saix asked.

"No better than we were three minutes ago," Larxene replied automatically, glaring at him from the corner of her eye, "I think that was the last of them."

"So no cops?"

She turned to look at him, leaning back in the passenger seat, drumming his fingers against the dash like they were just enjoying a lazy evening, "Unless they had more than three cop cars up there."

"It's an active crime scene, they couldn't have a dozen."

"Does the Departure PD even _have_ a dozen?"

"They have a bigger budget," Saix shrugged, "I'm just trying to be cautious."

"We're sitting in a stolen Mustang loaded down with stolen convenience store crap, I think we're past _caution_ , Saix."

His eyes narrowed, "You coulda stolen a less flashy car."

"It was this or an undead Winnebago. I figured we wanted mileage."

"Frat dude at least took good care of it," he said as a concession.

Larxene rolled her eyes, "Look, if you wanna stay here and watch the car, that's fine by me."

"You're not getting rid of me that easily, Larxene."

Worth a try, in any event. She sighed, "Then we go together."

" _Axel?_ "

"Keep it down," Larxene warned the bird, "We go in, we find what we need, we go."

"One thing we haven't considered."

"And what is that?"

"What if there's nothing to find?"

Larxene crossed her arms, "Axel was here. You said it yourself."

"Sure he was here. So? We're acting like he'd have left a paper trail, footprints in the dirt or something."

"You could've voiced this objection _before_ we spent 12 hours huddled up watching the street."

"I'm just saying, we should be prepared to _not_ find anything."

"Oh, I'm used to disappointment," she assured him, undoing the locks on the doors.

"That makes two of us," Saix decided, opening the passenger side door and stepping out.

Larxene made to follow, giving Zazu a warning look as she did so, locking the car up behind her. The night air felt light and fresh on her skin. Not for the first time, Larxene wished she was dressed more comfortably. Never mind she hadn't changed clothes in four days, she half felt she owed it to some tiny impulse in her brain to be wearing jeans, combats, the faded leather jacket with the old logo stitched into the back.

If she had any capacity for nostalgia, the image would be perfect. Truly though, it simply felt like some debt she owed to some invisible authority. If she was going to be kicking up adventure on the road, dodging the cops all the while, she might as well look the part.

"House should be right up the road," Saix nodded up the path.

"You don't say?" she cocked an eyebrow, sounding impressed, "I was wondering."

Saix shrugged, "Just...follow me, okay?"

"Because you're the expert on home invasions, yeah? How could I have forgotten?"

"No, I just..." he frowned, "Do _you_ wanna lead the way?"

By way of response, Larxene swept ahead of him up the road. She heard Saix sighing as he followed along behind her.

The way was uphill, steep and unforgiving in the dark. Larxene could make out the shadowy outlines of rope bridges, tiny wooden platforms in the treetops to either side of the path. It was like wandering through an amusement park after hours. Larxene felt the urge to laugh but suppressed it.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Saix didn't say anything, so Larxene decided she might as well give it a shot.

"When you and Axel skipped town..." she heard a tiny intake of breath from over her shoulder, maybe a muted attempt to silence her. She ignored it, "Did you know?"

" _What?_ " he asked, bitter, strained.

"I guess not."

"You proud? You're an excellent actress," he shrugged, "I don't see what the point is, going over it all now."

"Point? There...there _is_ no 'point', it's just...I've always wondered."

"Yeah, well...now you know. I never suspected a damn thing until it happened. That satisfy you?"

"Do you _think_ it would?"

He scoffed, and was quiet for a while before saying, slowly and deliberately, " _The craving of my body has been conquered/It no longer deceives my thoughts/Or colors them/Knowledge purer than flame/Is in me, consuming me_."

"Bitch Shelley?" Larxene guessed with little humor.

"Max Michelson. In short, I know better."

"So it's _my_ fault you conquered all your bodily cravings?"

He glared at her. She rolled her eyes, "I'm serious, Saix. I just...I was curious."

"Well, now you know. If anything, I guess I'm thankful."

"You don't mean that."

He didn't say anything more, however, but Larxene knew he didn't need to. They continued up the slope to the imposing, shadowed figure of the Hunting House on the ridge. All over the forecourt there were tire tracks recently left in the dirt and on the worn flagstone.

"No more cop cars," Larxene assessed, "We were right on the money."

"No police tape," Saix indicated the door, all the nearby windows, "House is a crime scene, why didn't they bother to secure it?"

"They _did_ leave in a hurry," Larxene pointed out, "I'd be more concerned about that."

They stood there, back to back, looking up and down the courtyard. Larxene could feel chills creeping up and down her spine. A hollow night wind whistled through the trees. She could hear the creaking of their limbs, swaying of those treehouse contraptions that had been set up around the place.

" _That_ looks like something," said Saix.

Larxene followed his gaze to a heap of splintered pinewood lying on the ground near the far side of the house.

"Must've fallen from up there," she indicated the treetops.

"Seems in character."

She gave him a look and Saix clarified, as if it should be obvious, "Or do we think the rich gun nut who owns the place would've tried it?"

"Good point."

Larxene tried, again, to imagine Axel's experience here, with the kid. The Skeleton Key... What was he like? Did he know...anything? About who he was, where he came from?

Did Axel know? Did he care? It was somehow easy to believe both that he did and that he didn't. Larxene didn't know which she wanted to be true.

"Well, come on..." Saix reached for the doorknob, but Larxene stopped him with a hand on his arm, catching her breath.

He shot her a questioning look. In response, Larxene nodded toward the second story a bit to their right: the window hanging open, shutters swinging slightly in the breeze.

Saix met her eye, a look of realization dawning on him. He nodded, his fingers going to his sidearm. Larxene rolled her eyes, scanning the area, looking for some other potential means of entry.

Again, she found dormant senses snapping back to life, an acute sense of shadows, corners and crevices along the sides of the lodge, hiding places, crawlspaces, anywhere someone might be able to creep in silently and unseen...

"How do you feel about tight spaces?"

"I live in a glorified walk-in closet."

"Good," Larxene nodded to a clapboard landing around the southeast corner of the lodge, where there was a thin layer of chicken netting, "That's our best bet."

"You said 'tight spaces', not 'ventilated casket'."

Larxene pressed her lips into a tight line, "Still time to go babysit the bird."

Saix looked like he wanted to say something to that, but he didn't. Larxene wasn't prepared to get into it again, but she much preferred him this way.

The netting was coarse sharp around the edges, but nothing Larxene's skilled fingers couldn't handle.

"Remember that time I cut a brake cable with my pinkie nail?" she asked, deftly pulling the wire apart.

"I thought you just made that up to scare the guys?"

"I did," she indicated the newly opened hole in the mesh, "But all lies are based in truth."

Saix sighed, swinging his legs through the hole ad dropping down into the cellar beyond. There was a brief pause before he called back to her, "Coast is clear, as long as you don't mind mildew."

"Do you _remember_ the Dugout?" she replied, dropping into the cellar behind him.

Saix made a noise that might've been a little laugh, "We could've had that couch exorcised."

Larxene was suddenly stricken by an entirely different memory regarding the Dugout couch, but decided not to say anything about it in the present company.

The cellar was low-ceilinged, fusty _and_ dusty, stinking of the aforementioned mildew, and a somehow even more offensive odor of moth balls.

They moved on through the shadows, picking their way carefully around the various crates and steamer chests.

"God, it's dark down here," said Larxene.

"I'm not about to go in search of a light switch, so..."

She glared at him, "Doesn't it seem strange to you? There were two arrests here, they found... _piles_ of evidence linking the owners to a crime syndicate...and now the place is just cleared out, unguarded..."

"Maybe there was another emergency. They all had to be recalled."

"Something worse than Axel?"

"There are plenty of things worse than Axel," Saix said it with a somehow glib conviction.

Larxene sighed, "Okay, so I think..."

A face loomed at her out of the darkness, black-eyed, screaming, crowned with horns. Larxene screamed, falling over her feet and crashing into Saix, sending them both spilling over a steamer trunk.

"Oh...oh God," she panted, struggling for words, "Oh...Jesus Christ."

"What...what the _hell_ was that?" he demanded beside her, shaking hair from his face.

"The...it was..." she gestured to the staring, gaping figure in the dark.

"Oh, deer," said Saix dryly.

"Fuck you," she got to her feet, looking the taxidermy stag up and down.

"Well, the good news is, if there _was_ anybody around, they'd already have come running down here to investigate..."

"Let's keep going," she said shortly.

"You sure you're okay? You seemed pretty rattled."

"I swear to God, Saix..."

They continued on through the cellar. Once or twice, Larxene heard the creaking of pressure on wood from above them. She looked at Saix, if only to ascertain whether he was aware of it too.

He was, "Old house. Big. Probably just settling."

Larxene remained unconvinced, but they continued on all the same, reaching a narrow flight of stairs up to the ground floor.

"Pretty narrow," Saix observed, "We'll have to go single file."

A short silence. Finally, Larxene rolled her eyes, "Fine, I'll go first."

"Well, I can go if you..."

" _I'll_ go first."

He didn't raise any objection to this, of course, and they continued on and up. Larxene only heard more creaking as they made their ascent, now compounded with the sound of their footfall on the old wood of the steps.

There was a short, trapezoidal door on the landing. Saix noted the rectangular protrusions in the ceiling above them, going up back the way they'd come.

"We're under a staircase."

"Astute," she allowed, turning the latch on the door and finding it opened easily, if not without a few squeaks that sent little daggers of tension through her nerve endings.

They were indeed under a staircase, in a grand hall with a shiny parquet floor. It was hard to tell in the dark, but the hall they were standing in was a cavernous, and well taken care of place. Luxia might have admired it. He liked poring over photo spreads of country houses in those stupid monthly circulars he subscribed to.

Well...that he _had_ subscribed too.

"What're we looking for, exactly?" asked Saix.

"Something that'll tell us where Axel is," she replied at once.

"Yes, well, I was hoping for some specificity..."

"If all you're gonna do is complain, Saix, you can just _go_!" she snapped, despite herself, voice echoing off the high ceiling.

Saix frowned, "You know very well I can't just _go_ , even if I wanted to. I'm a cop, wanted for abetting an unhinged murder suspect's flight for freedom..."

"Unhinged?" she cocked an eyebrow.

"Tell me something, Larxene," he crossed his arms, "What _really_ happened the day Marluxia died?"

"What does that have to do with _any_..."

"It's just I only know what you've told me, and the more I go over it, the less sense it makes..."

"You're a son of a bitch, you know that?"

"So don't answer me. That's fine. I've got a couple of theories."

She slapped him, the noise resounding in the quiet space. He stood his ground, glaring at her out the corner of his eye.

"You can keep the theories. Or you can get out," she told him, dangerously soft.

He said nothing. They stood there, facing off against each other. Finally, he looked up, saying in a more muted tone, "You hear that?"

" _What_?"

He shushed her. Larxene was half ready to hit him again for that alone, but she listened and heard it too. A whimper, breath hastily caught.

Someone was hear, determined to stay hidden, and pretty bad at it.

They looked at each other. Saix reached again for his sidearm, then moved past her. Larxene gritted her teeth, reaching for her own...well, Yuffie's...gun, and made to follow.

Across the hall, through a wide archway into a room ringed by high glass windows, through which clear, clean moonlight illuminated the space, shining off the clean wood tiles of the floor, off the heinously rustic antler-and-hide chandelier suspended from the ceiling.

And, positioned dead center beneath the chandelier with a painful attention to symmetry, was a spindle-legged chair and, in the chair...

"Well, shit," said Larxene, "Someone beat us to it."

The tiny man bound to the chair shook his head back and forth rapidly, muffled pleas stifled by the gag in his mouth.

"The cops wouldn't have left him here," she began.

"They're cops," said Saix, "So...they might've."

They looked around the room, Larxene entirely expecting some hidden surprise, a trap, anything placed expressly to catch her off guard, get them while they had their attention on this painfully obvious distraction...

"I don't get it," she said at last, at a loss.

"Easy way _to_ get it," Saix crossed the room, "We could always ask."

"Saix?" she went after him, "Saix, wait..."

But he'd already yanked the gag from the man's mouth, "I'm sure you've got some stories."

"Please!" he wheezed, "Please, have mercy! I...I don't..."

"If you _don't_ you wouldn't have been left tied up here," Saix lifted his gun so that it was inches from the man's face.

"Saix..." Larxene began, but Saix spoke over her, "The cops are gone."

"I told them nothing!"

"Nothing they didn't know already, you mean. What are you...housekeeper?"

"I...I take care of the house."

Saix eyed Larxene, who cleared her throat, feeling for her own gun, just so that their quarry could see it there.

"And you weren't arrested along with the huntsmen?" she shrugged, "Guess they're more than the cops need."

"They think they've found some smoking gun!" he said mournfully, "Fools, all of them."

"Pretty sassy from the guy tied to a chair," observed Saix, "Let me guess, these guys, Gaston and Clayton...they've got information, right? Departure PD's hoping they can give up names, incriminate some friends from underground?"

"Friends!" he said the word bitterly, "Gaston has no friends in the Underworld, I'd wager he never did."

"Saix, I don't know about you, but I didn't come here for a Who's Who of organized crime."

"They're not going to give up names," Saix agreed, "But you did. Didn't you?"

The man blanched, "I...I don't...how dare..."

"The cops left you here. You gave them some hints, pointed some fingers...you're a smart guy, and you must know all Gaston's hiding places..."

"Gaston will be lucky if he lives the night!"

Saix paused, "Dirty cops?"

"You sound surprised. I was only trying to..."

"You were only trying to cover your ass," said Larxene, "The human struggle. I'm moved to tears. Saix, what is the _point_?"

"The _point_ ," Saix cocked the gun, the clicking pronounced enough for the man to jump in his seat, the chair rocking back and forth on all four legs, "Is that you lied. The cops probably _know_ that, but they know there's no point taking you in. No...because your bosses know what you know. Hell, I never met the guy, but five seconds in this house and I'll bet Gaston's a pretty alpha type. Probably won't like the idea of you loose while he's chained up...he'll give you up...say things he'd _never_ admit about himself, just to clear his own ass."

He moved the gun down the length of the man's face, stopping at the heart, "Or am I wrong?"

"Gaston is...we've...I have been nothing _but_ loyal to him!"

"And been repaid so well for it," Larxene decided to take a turn, stepping over to the chair from the side, cupping the man's face in her hand, looking past his bulbous nose into wide, watery eyes.

"What's your name, baby?"

Larxene was acutely aware of Saix biting back a sigh behind her. Forget it. She wasn't content to just sit in the background while he played the bad cop to her good. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of that dynamic much anyway.

"L-LeFou..." came the answer.

"LeFou...that French?"

"I-it...I..."

"I'm sure the cops asked all sorts of questions, didn't they? About your boss's business, the house, lots of money stuff..."

"It's money, then? That's what you want?"

"Honey, I'm spending the alleged best years of my life working accounting for a major corporation. I know _too_ much about money. I don't need financial advice from some underground launderer."

"Then what _do_ you want?"

"There were two men here today. Well...a man and a boy. Surely, the cops asked about _them_?"

"I...I already told the police, I don't know..."

"Oh, _please_ ," Saix chimed in, "You don't expect us to believe that? You were in the house, so were they. Must've rattled your boss too, since he called the cops, only to be hoisted by his own petard."

Larxene eyed Saix, eyebrow cocked in confusion, but decided not to press for an explanation. They were getting somewhere, at last.

"They broke in!" protested LeFou, "Damaged property, the police had no right to seize what they did..."

"You're probably right," said Saix, "Unless something was already lying around in the open for them to see. Maybe disturbed by your pair of visitors?"

"They took something, is that it?" asked Larxene, "Gaston was reporting a burglary? And some...incriminating financial documents were still lying around waiting to be swept up..."

Why would Axel want anything from this place? It didn't make any sense. Unless the kid had some stake in it. Larxene knew nothing about the Skeleton Key besides the write-up that Vexen had shown her. And as much as it had explained, it left a great deal muddy, no doubt by design.

"What about the bikers?" asked Saix, "The Wind Makers. They were a part of this too."

"I already _told_ you!" he spat, "I won't tell you again!"

"You don't have much of a choice," Saix pressed the barrel of the gun to LeFou's forehead.

Larxene tensed, looking at Saix, trying to gauge whether he was bluffing. His expression was unchanging, stone like marble. She couldn't read a thing from it.

"Gaston hired them, is that it? And now that he's been grabbed, they have to cover their tracks..."

"I already told you!" he said again.

"You've told us next to nothing. Your brain can't be _that_ scrambled," Saix's finger moved on the trigger, "Yet."

"Do you think I'm a idiot? That I can't tell when I'm being played with? I already told your friend everything, you won't get anything more with this act..."

"Friend?" demanded Larxene, only to hear the clicking of _another_ gun, cocking.

She whirled around at once, lifting her own weapon as Saix did the same beside her.

"He's not very bright," said a silky, rich voice, "But even _he_ wouldn't just tie _himself_ up."

She stepped out of the shadows. A shapely woman, dark complexion, darker hair, eyes hidden by even darker aviator lenses. She held a sidearm in both hands, trained on both Larxene and Saix in a general sense. Larxene didn't doubt she could make up her mind and shoot the both of them in two seconds with barely a movement.

"We figured the anonymous binder and gagger had already vacated the premises," said Saix dryly.

"She was _about_ to," said the woman, "When she heard someone screaming bloody murder in the basement."

Larxene could feel Saix glaring at her distastefully. Choosing to ignore that, she kept her attention on the woman, "Hope you got your kicks out of the show. I was just about to start pistol whipping."

"Kinky," she seemed unimpressed,.

"You're with the Wind Makers?" asked Saix.

The woman let out a mirthless chuckle, "God no. I suppose you were expecting them?"

"We don't owe _you_ an explanation," said Larxene.

"No, of course not. But you _are_ very interested in the rogue Earthshaker and his boy companion, yes?"

Larxene tensed. She racked her brain for some kind of nonverbal signal to send to Saix, but he went on talking before she could think of one.

"What do _you_ want with them?"

"You guessed it yourself. They have information of...a certain value to my employer."

"Three guesses who _that_ is," said Larxene.

"LeFou was right. He _already_ sang for me. Your boys fell in with the wrong crowd."

"The Wind Makers have Axel?" asked Saix in a very different tone of voice, a note of consternation creeping in which was, at first, lost on Larxene, before she made the connection.

 _Oh shit_.

"Where are they?" she asked.

"Now _why_ would I tell you that? Because you've got one more gun than I do?"

"You want the papers Axel stole," said Saix, "We want Axel. The two goals aren't mutually exclusive."

" _Mutually exclusive_ , huh? A thug with an education."

"We exist," said Saix, apparently not inclined to refute that he was a thug. Wouldn't Axel love to be here right now.

"I'm afraid I can't help you," she said at last, "My work doesn't mix well with others."

"Hey, lady, I'm not a people person either," said Larxene, "Believe me. But you said it yourself, we've got one gun on you and, to be honest, I've got _no_ scruples about..."

"Wait."

"Second thoughts? Well, that's great..."

"Larxene," Saix chimed in, more urgently.

Larxene looked over her shoulder in time to see a bright red circle against LeFou's sweaty brow.

"Get down!" the woman cried.

Saix grabbed Larxene by the arm, dragged her to the floor. In the next second, there was a pop, a clink of broken glass, and a horrible squelching noise. Larxene felt a spray of hot blood on the back of her neck. She let out a cry, felt Saix beside her.

She raised her eyes haltingly, lookin from the perfect round hole in LeFou's forehead to the barely visible pinprick high in the glass of the window across the room from them.

"Move," ordered the woman, "Come on, move, out!"

Larxene didn't need to be told twice. Collecting her own gun, she hurried out after her, Saix close at her heels.

"Who _was_ that?" she asked as they tore across the entrance hall.

"Like I know? Someone who didn't want LeFou to talk."

"He was a bit late for that," said Saix, turning toward the cupboard under the stairs before the woman grabbed him by the arm.

"Where the hell are you going?"

" _Out_!"

"A waste of time," she turned for the front doors, "He already knows we're here, he'll be expecting us to hole up inside, might be watching the crawlspace."

"You know about the crawlspace?" asked Larxene. The woman's unruffled noise of assent gave the indication she did, and this wasn't very remarkable information.

"He won't be watching the biggest exit."

"He thinks we're smarter than that?" asked Saix.

"He _knows_ I'm smarter than that," she threw the doors open, tearing out into the night. Larxene looked at Saix, and he looked at her.

They followed, down the road and into the night.

"You two got a car?" their erstwhile associate asked.

"What, you _walked_?"

She offered no answer to that. Larxene admitted, "Yes, we have a car!"

"Good. It's a bit of a drive where we're going."

"We're going somewhere, now?"

"You wanted to see the Wind Makers, didn't you?" she took off her shades, showing a pair of bright, shockingly green eyes, "I'll help you find them. But you'd better keep up. I don't have to tell you what missing a beat will get us."

* * *

"We are so screwed. _So_ screwed..."

"The reminder's no less helpful the fifteenth time," muttered Zexion, pressing two fingers against his forehead.

Demyx frowned, "I'm sorry, just...I really messed up, didn't I?"

"Why are _you_ apologizing again?" asked Riku, looking from one to the other, "Aren't these guys holding you prisoner, same as me?"

Zexion's lips tightened in a fine line as Demyx sighed, "Well...kinda."

"We had an arrangement," said Zexion, turning to look the other way with an air of pointed disinterest that might, just might, conceal shame.

"I had to act..."

"Not lucid, yeah, I remember," Riku looked over the door, not sure what he was expecting at this point. It was still closed, they were still shut in, in the dark. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Demyx isn't supposed to be here," said Zexion, toying with a pen between two fingers.

"And I am?"

Zexion shrugged, "I don't make the rules."

Riku rolled his eyes, "But you were happy to bend them for me. With Sora."

"Zex isn't a bad guy," said Demyx.

Zexion glared at him out the corner of his eye. Demyx sighed, " _Zexion_ is actually pretty cool. Once you get to know him."

Riku looked the intern's way, "Guess we should be grateful we got the cool kidnapper."

"I didn't kidnap anyone."

"Fine. Accomplice."

"You're talking high and mighty, all things considered. I might as well say you're a thug and a menace by association just because you ride around with one of those biker gangs I hear so much about."

"That's weak," said Riku, "Worst thing the Earthshakers do these days is run races and raid discount stores."

"Store clerks are people too," Zexion shrugged, "Since we're clearly disregarding moral equivalency for the duration of this argument..."

"You think you sound _smart_ , talking like that? Using your mental thesaurus so that you automatically sound right? Don't wanna disappoint you, but it just makes you sound like an asshole."

There was a silence. At last, Demyx said, "I know what moral equivalency means. But that's because, on this show I watch, this guy, Haley, went out behind Hayden's back..."

"Haley and Hayden?" asked Riku.

"Don't get him started," warned Zexion.

"...with this girl, Jennette, who was really Haley's long lost sister. Sorry, whoa, meant Hayden. She was _Hayden's_ long lost sister. So to get back at her, she made out with Jesse, that's Hayden's brother, in public. And then she spent, like, five minutes talking to herself about moral equivalency."

He joined them, leaning on different sides of the sterile exam table, "So that's how I know what that means."

Riku sighed, looking at Zexion, "I've done some shit I regret."

"Oh, I'm sure," Zexion smiled enigmatically, like he knew something. Riku tensed. He couldn't...could he? Much as he got the impression the creepy characters around this place could read his mind, that was probably just some effect, intended to make him feel that way.

"I'd never do to anybody what you guys are doing to people here."

Zexion made some low purring noise in the back of his throat, leaning forward, "And what are _we_ doing?"

"Yeah," said Demyx suddenly, "What?"

Riku turned to him, "You don't know?"

"Man, I'm lucky I know what I _do_ know. They grabbed me right in the middle of a jam, didn't even make sure my sitar was okay."

"Your..."

"It's a type of stringed instrument," said Zexion, "like a mandolin."

Riku glared at him, but Demyx kept on as if nobody had interrupted, "What I _do_ know, is Zexion's the one guy I've met in this place who's bothered to help me."

Riku was tempted to ask if there were any catches to this particular brand of help, but he knew he wasn't going to get any straight answers one way or the other.

"So...you're an Earthshaker," said Demyx, "Axel's buddy?"

"I...um...I don't know if I've ever used the word 'buddy', but...yeah. Axel helped me join up."

Demyx nodded, "Cool. I was never, like, in the gang. But that was because of my sister. She was like, _uber_ protective. Thought I'd get in over my head or something, I don't know. But I always hung out with them. Axel, Larxene, that's my sister, and Saix."

"Saix?" Riku cocked his eyebrow, the name coming back to him as if from a thousand years ago, "The cop?"

"What?" Demyx blinked, "Oh. Well, yeah...guess he _is_ a cop now. You know him?"

"We've met. Once," Riku shrugged, "They were friends? He and Axel?"

"Friends? Dude, they were..." Demyx shook his head, a wistful cast coming over his face, "They were like _brothers_. It was weird, too. Ax was always the wild one, you know. He got us all into trouble, always joking and smiling and all that. And Saix never smiled. We called him Moonboy, yanno, cuz he liked the moon, so much, but I'm not gonna lie, at first I thought it was because he was so moody all the time. Get it? Moody Moonboy, I thought..."

"Easy mistake to make," said Zexion,sounding only a little tired. Riku grimaced at him, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Well, he was always quiet, had his nose in a book. And always getting Axel out of trouble. And, yanno, the rest of us too," he sighed, a noise heavy and plaintive.

"You okay?" asked Riku.

"Yeah..." he nodded, "Just...it's sad. How it all ended up. I tried not to think about it, but...then Ax came back home, and I..." he shrugged, "I guess I thought things would change."

"Well, in a way, they did," said Zexion, "Didn't they?"

Riku rolled his eyes, but Demyx smiled, "Yeah. Guess they did."

There was a noise of a key turning in a lock. Zexion tensed at once, rising to full attention. Demyx, in the same instant, stumbled backward, suddenly frightened and anxious again. Riku stood in place, looking at the door, feeling the tiny scratching at the inside of his head that indicated Xehanort was eager to have a say in things.

He was determined to prevent _that_ eventuality for as long as he could get away with.

The door opened, and the harsh white beam of a flashlight cut into the shadows of the tiny storage room, causing the three of them to wince.

"Any news?" asked Zexion, sounding a tetch relieved.

Lexeaus said nothing, crossing over to place the lantern squarely in the center of the table. Riku noticed his attention lingered on him, probably wondering just what percentage of Xehanort he was at the moment.

"The power is out over the entire building. As far as we've been able to ascertain, there's outages over the whole county."

He turned to the door and shut it, not roughly, but enough to produce a sound loud enough to startle Demyx into a tiny scream, which he hastily backed down from, looking abashed.

"Any reason?" asked Zexion.

Lexeaus shook his head, "The benign observer would assume freak accident."

"We're far past 'benign' here," said Zexion.

Lexeaus's expression didn't change. It never seemed to. But there was a sheen in his tiny black eyes as he said, "Would that you were past recklessness as well."

For the first time since Riku had known him, Zexion seemed to deflate, averting his eyes under the sting of the words, "It was only..."

"It was foolish. And bringing Vexen in on it more foolish still."

"It was the only way..."

Lexeaus looked for half a second at the dumbstruck Demyx, turning his attention back to Zexion, "I'd prepare myself. All of you."

"There's something else?" asked Zexion faintly.

"Destiny," he said at last, and left it at that.

Riku wasn't about to let it rest there, "Destiny? What happened? Is...is it someone else, was someone else taken?"

"Who would've taken them?" asked Demyx, "All the takers work here."

Lexeaus stared at him, and Demyx cleared his throat, "Er...so I heard. I mean. Just...an assumption, yanno."

Lexeaus merely repeated, "Prepare yourselves," moving to stand by the far wall.

In another movement, there were frantic footsteps from outside. Riku could hear harsh, frenetic breathing. Hands fumbling with the doorknob.

"Blasted, bloody _damned_ door..." the familiar voice wheezed, "Zexion! Zexion, you unlock this..."

Lexeaus crossed to the door in a single stride and opened the already unlocked door, permitting Vexen to practically fall into the room, hair caught in a sweaty tangle, face a sickly gray color.

He looked around at all of them, "Ah, have I interrupted this meeting of Idiots Incorporated? Sincerest apologies."

The door swung shut behind him, the noise startling Vexen, who whirled on his heel, gave a cry, saw it was nothing, and then collapsed against the counter, breathing heavily.

"You..." he looked at them all in a general sense, eyes wide and frantic, "...you all have a _deal_ of explaining to do."

"Vexen..." Zexion began.

"I am a _doctor_!" Vexen screamed over him, his words echoing in the confined space, "I have _two_ PhDs _and_ a University fellowship. I have broken my _back_ for this work, for this inane dream, this sorry castle on a hill. I have sweat _holy wine_ in the name of research..."

"So _that's_ what that smell is," said Demyx.

Vexen stared at him, eyes wide. Demyx faltered, "I mean, it just...when you walked in, it smelled kinda like wine. Like, my sister's boyfriend, he likes this weird pink stuff, it's got this funny name..."

Vexen let out a bestial scream, lunging forward to put his hands on Demyx's neck.

"Stop that!" snapped Zexion, "You know as well as I, he has nothing to..."

Riku, feeling he owed it to Axel if to nobody else to keep his friend from meeting a particularly visceral and, in the moment, uncomfortably familiar end, stepped forward to come between mad scientist and vapid virtuoso both.

But Lexeaus beat him to it, spreading both his arms out, one rougher than the other. Demyx was neatly shielded, while Vexen fell back against the table, bright green eyes glinting from between strands of hair that had fallen over his face.

"Holy smokes," breathed Demyx, peeking out from behind Lexeaus, who looked at Vexen with a steely attention.

"If you want to find a scapegoat, I'd recommend searching closer to home."

Vexen looked up at Lexeaus, eyes wide, a slow, almost maniacal grin spreading over his face. But rather than laugh or scream or anything like that, he merely opened his mouth and began to sob, crying like a baby into both hands.

Riku looked at Zexion, who merely shrugged, looking uncomfortable.

"It was me!" he wailed, "My hubris, damn it all! That which did for Titans and heroes both, why should a mortal be so spared?"

"Hubris," Zexion whispered into Riku's ear, "It's destructive pride."

"I know," Riku replied curtly, not bothering to hide a look of exasperation.

"It was a dream, a damned tempting dream, but a dream all the same. I was deluded to pursue it. Perhaps we all were, and I was just late realizing it..."

"You at least believed in something," said Lexeaus evenly, "The same can't be said for all of us."

"Oh? Maybe not. But you...stone-faced stalwart that you are. You at least do as you're told. No room for golden geese in your purview."

Lexeaus gave no answer to that. Vexen let out a long, rattling gasp, "It's over now, you understand. Done. We shall all be ruined."

"What happened?" asked Zexion.

Vexen looked at him, "Nothing you didn't see coming a thousand miles away. Incorrigible smart-alec that you are. Oh, for a lick of your obstinance when I was that age. A _taste_ of your smart tongue. Perhaps I would've been bolder, made better choices. Perhaps I'd have avoided getting chained down to this miserable mausoleum."

"There's no use fixing on what might have been," said Lexeaus, firmly, but not cruelly.

"No, of course not. But I see now, what she meant..." Vexen blinked his eyes, new tears trickling down his cheeks, " _I've looked at life from both sides now/From up and down and still somehow_...'"

" _It's life's illusions I recall,_ " Riku finished the lyric for him, " _I really don't know life at all_."

Vexen looked at him, "I...I don't recall leaving _that_ particular album playing."

"No," said Riku, not even sure what he was saying, "It's just...I know the song."

"Do you?" he asked faintly.

And, despite himself, Riku nodded, "I think...I don't know why, but...I think my mother used to listen to it."

Vexen blinked at him, "You never knew your mother." Not a question. Riku supposed he must have it on file somewhere.

"No," he said, "I didn't."

Vexen continued to breathe shallowly, wiping at his tears. Demyx was tapping out some sort of rhythm on the table, nervous fingers clacking away against the smooth surface. Lexeaus stood still as a statue, looking at Riku with a new interest.

While Riku felt he was almost drifting in space, the corners of his mind tinged with a new memory. Not quite a memory, maybe. A feeling. Something warm, comforting. Soft. A thin, white hand hovering over a gramophone needle, soft strains of music filling a sunny, airy room.

" _Not as fancy as you hoped?_ " a soft, gentle voice. Those delicate, yet strong white hands on his shoulders, filling him, emboldening him, renewing him.

The voice on the record, ' _Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels/The dizzy, dancing way you feel/When every fairy tale comes real...I've looked at love that way._ '

And his voice, the voice that wasn't his voice. Strong, happy. Relaxed.

" _I could never have hoped for this_."

" _You're too sweet_." and her smile made every inch of him feel alive again, " _Sometimes I can't believe you're real._ "

' _But now it's just another show/You leave 'em laughing when you go/And if you care, don't let them know/Don't give yourself away._ '

There was a new noise. Heavier footsteps, more than one set. Riku was forced back to the present, that scratching persisting in his head.

Vexen let out a short, watery gasp, looking to Lexeaus, who nodded, giving him a hand to help him to his feet, one which he readily accepted.

Zexion looked at Demyx, who'd blanched again. With another look at Riku, he said, "Get in front of him."

"What?"

"Please,"

Riku blinked, "I don't see what..."

"Just in case. You're the only one."

Riku believed he understood what that meant, and wished he didn't. In any case, he stepped in front of Demyx, who didn't look entirely pleased with the arrangement.

The door opened effortlessly, another flashlight beam passing over all of them.

"Here's the lot," said Xaldin dryly, "What are you, preparing for the end?"

"There are worse places for it," next to him, Xemnas wore the same look of utter contempt that had so marked him when Riku had last seen him. He was still wearing a neat, expensive suit, but he had on an overcoat over it, as if he'd only just come in from outside and hadn't bothered to make himself comfortable. Though Riku doubted Xemnas was ever really comfortable, as a rule.

"I wonder," Xemnas continued, closing the door behind him, moving with a careful deliberation around the room, looking at all of them in particular, "what you all think is going on?"

Demyx let out a tiny, nervous laugh, which turned into a nervous whimper the second Xemnas turned to him.

"We'll start with you, shall we?"

"This has nothing to do with him," said Riku, looking at Zexion, "Right?"

And Zexion nodded, "That's right. Sir, we..."

"Sir," he rolled his eyes, "You're a capable young man, Zexion. I chose you for a reason, and nepotism was far from it."

While Xemnas's attention did not change, Zexion did look for a brief flicker of a second toward Lexeaus, who stood rigidly at attention, as if ready at any moment to do to anyone in this room what he'd done to Riku back in that hallway.

"You were supposed to deal with the boy."

"The boy..." Zexion's voice was hoarse and dry, "He didn't fit the established criteria, we had no outlines for dealing with..."

"You believe that? Vexen, with his...how many PhDs, was it?"

Vexen said nothing, merely glowering, "We did not have the resources for a subject of this..." he looked at Demyx, "Sex."

"It was my sister you guys wanted," said Demyx, the effort to speak clearly taking a lot, "Looza screwed you over, you were stuck."

" _Looza_ did a great deal more damage than you are capable of understanding," Xemnas said smoothly, "In any case, he's since been dealt with."

Riku didn't understand, but Demyx's face fell, "Wha...wait, you mean...he's..."

"His bargain was foolish, his confidence for your sister. I grant that. He thought himself a master negotiator, of course, substituting you in her stead," he looked at Vexen, "In any event, no excuse not to carry out the task. Much less to _lie_ about it being carried out."

"I will repeat," said Vexen, every syllable shaking, "Carrying out the procedure, _especially_ given the current circumstances, would have been a tremendous waste of resources. And for what gain..."

"Gain?" Xemnas cocked an eyebrow, "Hasn't it always been you, Vexen, going on about how each test, whether in success or failure, lends something to the collective knowledge? What a choice time to abandon your principles."

"I have _never_..." Vexen spat, " _Never_ abandoned my principles. Not the academic ones, at any rate. I might have sold every other value I had the second I walked into your father's office, but I've _never_ abandoned the heart of this work. The _science_ of it."

"What an impassioned performance. You must all be moved to witness it," Xemnas looked around at all of them.

"I will admit," he turned back to Demyx, "I really have no use for you. I'm less upset that no work was done on you than that I was _lied_ to about it."

"He didn't lie to you, though," said Zexion, "And, in any event, given the results from the last subjects, would we really have been any..."

"My sister," Demyx interrupted him, "What did you want with my sister?"

Xemnas sighed, "What did I _want_ with her?" he shrugged, "Nothing, in particular. Merely that she possesses certain...qualities. What was it, Vexen...tertiary characteristics?"

"Secondary," he said bitterly, "Hair, eyes, complexion. Easier for the DNA to acclimate...in theory."

"She is a lovely woman, your sister. If somewhat temperamental. If half the stories I've heard are true..."

"You leave her alone!" Demyx pushed between both Riku and Zexion, but Xaldin got to him first, lashing out with that retractable cudgel of his. Demyx was caught in the stomach, bowled over.

"That's quite enough of that," Xemnas gave Xaldin a warning look, "Your sister has only one use to me at this point, and it's not the one she was ordained for. You may consider her safe."

"So...whatever you needed her for in the first place..." began Demyx.

"Has already been done," Xemnas turned slowly across the room, "To no greater surprise than my own. Isn't that so, Vexen?"

"You...you found..."

"I found her."

"She's alive, then?" asked Lexeaus.

"Alive and among the living. For almost three days now. For all intents and purposes, she is still a teenage girl. She has no recollection of anything that may have happened before, in this life...or in her previous one."

Vexen couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, "It worked, then?" for a moment, he had moved past his despair, settling on a muted excitement, "It truly..."

"Answer me, Vexen," Xemnas spoke over him, "Why you were so hesitant to attempt any risk with _him_ ," he nodded to Demyx "And yet, in this case, you not only took tremendous risk, but _deliberately_ defied my _express_ orders?"

A frigid charge passed through the room. Riku could hear Zexion catch his breath, Xaldin's fingers tighten around his lance. Lexeaus turned his head from Vexen to Zexion, moving half a step closer to the latter.

Vexen, for his part, stood up straight, tossing his hair out of his eyes, "Your _orders_? Why, Superior...let me tell you about your _orders_ ," he began to pace around the room, eyes only for Xemnas, though in a voice that carried, as though he were speaking to all of them.

"I entered into this field to do good. Optimistically, perhaps, I believed the castle in the sky dogma of your father...and _hers._ Perhaps lives could be improved, saved. Good works. Why not? It is the duty of the scientist to probe the secrets of the natural world, for the betterment of mankind, yes? And yet...as you well know, I found myself doing more harm than good. Ambition is a cancer. Don't you agree?"

"Your theatrics are impressive, but I've no time for the history lesson."

"Oh, but it all goes back to that!" he snapped, "All of it. _It'll be better under Xemnas! You'll see. He'll listen to you. He'll fund your research._ No more tinkering with antibiotics, no more fussing with microbial bacteria! _Serious_ work! _True_ work. This was Purgatory, and all I needed to do was push the one singular boulder up the hill, and on to Paradise for me! We were all fooled," he turned to Lexeaus, than to Xaldin, "Don't try to pretend otherwise, the both of you. You know what you were promised. Here we are, near twenty years on. Has any of it borne fruit?"

Lexeaus didn't say anything, but Xaldin added, "You've a very specific definition of 'fruit' in mind, Vexen. The trouble with you is, you reach too high and try too little."

"Ha!" he let out a long, screeching laugh, "Oh, if I could do it all again, I _would_ try as little as humanly possible. God knows I'd be better off. But no, I did the work, year after year. Promise to promise. And the worst part, Xemnas? I believe you _did_ care about it. Your father's research. Once upon a time."

The scratching in Riku's head turned to pounding, hammering. He tried to ignore it, "The...the soul research?"

"Precisely," Vexen turned to him, "You should understand better than most."

"That's why you're keeping me here. Hades and his people...they just wanted ransom money, but you..."

"You have answers," Vexen shrugged, "Or at least, the voice in your head does," he turned to Xemnas, "Call it a last ditch effort."

"I have remained devoted to my father's research," Xemnas told Vexen, his voice dangerously low, "Regardless of all the pain it's brought me."

"If you truly cared about the research, you'd have come right to this office the _second_ the Skeleton Key made it out..."

"Under your nose, wasn't it?"

Vexen reddened, "You never cared about the project. Or if you did, you stopped years ago. No, there's only one priority you have in any of this, and it's not the _work_ , it's the _girl_."

Xemnas's nostrils flared, his eyes blazing, "Don't talk of what you can't understand."

"Oh, I understand well enough. I've taken enough women apart and put them back together to understand _all too well_. You and your blond haired, blue eyed, snowy-skinned paramour... you know, there's a book about a man who goes to all lengths to resurrect a woman who can't love him. Perhaps you've heard of it, it's called _Frankenstein._ "

"Heh," Demyx chuckled dryly, "Shelley."

Vexen turned to him. He cleared his throat, "Her...husband wrote, like, poems and stuff."

"Wait..." Riku interrupted, "The missing women...they were all supposed to be... _this_ woman?"

"Oh yes," Vexen nodded, that thin grin on his face, his teeth gleaming frighteningly white in the near darkness, " _The_ woman. A...sample of DNA was collected years ago following an...unfortunate incident we don't get into much at the office. All these years, planning and working to attune it to something that might serve as a facsimile of the _soul_ , so she could be resurrected in a new vessel," he looked Riku over, "The son's talents do not outweigh the father's in any measurement. As far as I can tell, Xehanort had no trouble with you...even if the manner was somewhat unconventional."

Riku's head was pounding, throbbing. He could hear whispered phrases, indistinct. Maybe Xehanort protesting, or wanting to gloat in his son's face. He swayed on his feet. Behind him, Demyx put a hand on his shoulder, but Riku shook it off. He didn't want to lose control, get someone hurt.

Not again.

"So many young, helpless, nameless women..."

"They had names!" Demyx protested, "They...they were people. They...they are, you couldn't just..."

"I couldn't make them something they weren't? No, and numerous cautionary tales would carry a similar Aesop. Soppy and idealistic though it may sound...I eventually realized there must be some point to that," Vexen turned to Riku, "After all, in the one _documented_ instance of a soul being transferred successfully into a new being, there was already a biological connection. The chosen vessel did not respond nearly as well as the vessel's offspring."

Riku didn't need to be told any more. With a horrible sinking feeling, it fell into place around him. He was not sure how much of this was owed to Xehanort, or how much to his own reasoning, whatever remained of it. But Xemnas's quiet, seething fury, the way Vexen was looking at him...

"Kairi," Riku said at last, "That's why Kairi was last. That's why Seifer..."

"Seifer," Xemnas growled the name, "A lowlife thug for lowlife work. Highly recommended of course, via certain...Underworld associates. In a manner of speaking. A cowardly urchin who would do anything for money..." he glared at Vexen, "Even switch employers."

"You paid Seifer to kidnap the girls."

"Most of them," sniffed Vexen dismissively.

"But you paid for Kairi on your own."

Vexen nodded, "There was too much time being wasted, too many _resources_ depleted. And, following certain...unsavory procedures done for no other reason than to pay up debts to the dregs of society..."

Riku heard Demyx let out a short gasp behind him, but did not pause to think what he was thinking.

"...there was nothing more to be done. Why endanger more lives to restore the Lost Lenore, when her daughter was already walking amongst the living? The DNA would be no trouble...why shouldn't it be the easiest thing in the world to bind mother and daughter?"

Riku took a step back, "So...so Kairi..."

"Kairi has been released into the world, the spitting image of her mother," said Xemnas, "And with next to none of the memories that matter. Helpless, like a broken bird."

"You say released like I loosed her myself. She _escaped._ "

"And how, I wonder?" asked Xemnas, looking from Xaldin to Lexeaus, "How, on the same day you let the Skeleton Key get away, that you let _him_ walk in the doors..." he jerked his head toward Riku.

"She _escaped_ ," hissed Vexen, "Do understand that that was never my intention. The procedure may have worked, but the girl is doomed to a terrible fate all the same. If anything, it's better for her she get as far from you as poss..."

Xemnas lunged over the table. Vexen, to his credit, only flinched, not jumping back or crying out.

"You arrogant, self-righteous hypocrite! I never wanted anything but..."

"You wanted what every lovestruck teenage boy wants from the girl that won't say yes," said Vexen, "If this had worked with _any_ of the other subjects, you'd not be complaining at all, but because it's _this_ particular girl..."

"Because of _your_ lies, your secrets, your _pride_ , an unblemished _child_ has been released into the same corrupted, twisted _corpse_ of a world that killed her in the first place!"

"The world has always been twisted and corrupted, Xemnas. Perhaps you ought to have considered that before embarking on this endeavor of yours..."

"Her mother is dead," Xemnas said softly.

Vexen stopped at once, "W-what?"

"Ansem's widow. She was killed, right before the girl's eyes if I understand correctly. She witnessed the whole thing."

Vexen stared, eyes wide, lips forming soundless words. Xaldin looked at the floor, breathing through his nose, knuckles white against his lance. Lexeaus closed the distance between himself and Zexion, who suddenly looked very faint.

Only Demyx seemed just as confused now as he'd been the entire time. Riku caught his eye once, and he shook his head at him. Riku himself could feel his head splitting. He wanted to grab onto it, but he knew that would do nothing.

"There was another killing too," Xemnas continued, "Two days ago. A woman. One commonality in the method...a distinctive mark on the chest."

Riku cried out, feeling his legs give way beneath him. His head was burning, the voice shouting in his ears.

' _He was supposed to be dead. Dead and gone like the rest. Buried or burned. Liars all!_ '

" _She..._ " Riku heard his voice, not his voice, " _she was blameless. Cared for nothing but Ansem's fool family_..."

"Wait, what the hell..." Demyx began, but Xemnas spoke over him, "Father. How good of you to join us."

"I'm..." Riku fought the impulse, the overwhelming temptation to just give in, let Xehanort answer, "I'm not your father."

"Of course not. How touching, though, that he still cares for his old friend's wife. Why not? The woman practically enabled his family falling apart, they may have hated each other, but it all worked to the same end, didn't it?"

" _Where_ is the girl, now?" Vexen demanded, "If...if that _thing_ is loose, she can't be..."

"You think I'm not aware of that?" asked Xemnas, "You think that, perhaps, my _anger_ in this moment is entirely independent of the _danger_ she's in?"

"You are trying to blame me for this," said Vexen.

"You _defied_ me..."

" _You_ hijacked all my research to relive an adolescent fantasy and, _like_ an adolescent, you are all-too eager to hang the blame for all of this on others who have put in actual _work..._ "

"It's not just her," said Xemnas, "No, there is a deal more than that. Riku, perhaps you would like to ask him about Sora?"

Riku looked up, wincing, "S-Sora?"

"You were very concerned about him when last we spoke, weren't you?" Xemnas practically whispered the words, "Perhaps Vexen could explain what's become of him?"

Vexen shook his head, looking at Riku and taking a considerable step back, "Neither you nor I know enough about _any_ of this to say _anything_."

"We know enough," Xemnas turned to Riku, lowering himself to one knee to look into his eye, like some concerned father, "Riku, your little ray of sunshine is in a considerable predicament."

Riku felt his vision clouding, his head swirling with sensation, raw, ugly passion, "W-what...what are you talking about?"

"I fear that he may be lost to us. For good. And all down to Vexen's own shoddy decisions. His lies, his scheming, his laxity..."

"Oh, that is a _gross_ misstatement, as if I had anything..."

"He's gone. Gone as Kairi is gone, and I fear we will not be getting him back..."

Riku remembered Sora, bent over on the floor of that cell, crying out wordlessly, Riku grasping wildly for his hand through the door. Feeling him slip away through his fingers, his cry fading fading to a moan, a whimper...and nothing.

"He's gone. Worse than gone..."

Sora's smile, their fists against each other... Sora trusted him, he'd confided in him, he expected nothing, wanted no apology...they were okay, they were alright, they were _friends_...

"...he's incomplete."

Riku sprang to his feet, reflexes coming alive, every cell burning. Like a panther, he pounced across the room. There was a cry, a crash, and he was on the floor, looking down at Vexen's face.

"It wasn't about him!" he cried.

"Idiot boy!" Vexen spat, blood dribbling from his mouth, "Don't you see what he's trying..."

Riku didn't, couldn't listen. His hands turned to fists, connecting with Vexen's jaw, his nose, his chest...

"He...wasn't... _part_...of this!" blood spurted from Vexen's face with each punch, coming away on his knuckles. A familiar feeling, Riku realized now, remembering Pete, finally remembering in its totality those moments at the Hollow, as if they'd only happened minutes ago.

"You...you don't..." Vexen convulsed sharply blood oozing from his face, staining the white of his coat, "You're playing right into..."

"Never..." Riku could barely even hear his own words, growled through clenched teeth, "Never...should have..."

" _Please_!" Vexen was begging now, in broken words, drowned out by blood. Riku could hear the cracking of broken bones, feel hands on his shoulders, trying to pull him off, separate them.

He refused to be moved.

"Never should have...followed him..." he felt the blood on his hands, his face, there were tears there too.

"Left him alone. Left him..." Vexen had stopped moving beneath him. Riku realized this and, suddenly, a sweeping, cold calm descended on him.

"Alone."

He lowered his face to Vexen's bloodied chest and cried, sobs turning to screams as the pain in his head turned from fire to ice to a deep, smothering oblivion.

Riku welcomed it.

* * *

 **A/N:** I consider that last scene among my favorites in the whole bit, mostly because it was so fun giving Vexen his Swan Song. Oh, and it's also fun solving mysteries and stuff.

I am afraid that at this point, I must leave you for a bit longer than usual. Like the _last_ case, ten chapters ago, don't expect it to be longer than a month. _Radiant Creatures_ is barreling into its last act, and I've got some catching up to do.

In any case, I hope these last few chapters have been enough to tide you over and more, and that you're as excited for incoming installments in the story as much as I am to be writing them.

Until we meet again...


	32. The Icebox Sessions, Water on the Tracks

Chapter 32, The Icebox Sessions (Water on the Tracks)

 **A/N:** Welcome back! It's been a bit of a hiatus, but I was determined not to keep you guys waiting more than a month. This chapter is...unique. It was as fun to write as it was aggravating, but by the end it had become one of my favorite things in the whole story.

I hope you end up sharing the same sentiment.

* * *

NOVEMBER 14...15? (strikethrough) 13? (strikethrough) SUNDAY

Okay. I'm writing now. I don't know if they're gonna check this. I have a feeling they won't. But they'll pretend to. Like, one of them will come around and say 'Hey, man, let's see your diary' and then they'll look at it for, like, two seconds, and walk away.

I could probably write anything I want in here.

Crud. My hand already hurts. I mean...I guess I should start with who I am. That's important. Especially if I don't make it out of here which could always happen. I don't know. I don't know a lot.

Yo. I'm Demyx, frontman for the Cardinal Points, and I don't know if I'm a hostage or an experiment.

The Cardinal Points is my band. I should've said that before. We do classic rock, and sometimes we do pop, and we really started out doing folksy stuff...and now Pence is trying to get us into reggae, but I don't know if there's much of an audience for that.

I like R&B a lot. But I like lots of music. As long as you can dance to it, makes you feel better and happier. Everyone's so sad now. I think they forgot how to be happy. There's always so much to do, you know?

So that's what I wanna do. Make people happy, wash away their troubles.

Now I'm thinking about them...Hayner, Pence and Olette. They're the rest of the band. I was with Hayner when all this crazy crap went down. We were jamming at the Dugout, that's our spot. He was being a real goof, and I was trying to teach him a new song...

It's by Anne Murray. She's Canadian. Olette said we should try some foreign music, and I went to the record store, and I see this blond lady on the record sleeve and she's got this really nice smile...

People don't smile on American records. You notice that? Or, if they do, it's like a smug smile? It feels fake, is what I mean. But Anne Murray seems happy. That's great. I like happy people. Did I already say that?

See, this is why I dropped out of school. I think my hand's gonna fall off.

Me and Hayner. We were doing the Anne Murray song, and he was goofing off. He's been acting weird lately. Like, he laughs whenever I start talking. Which is nice, but I don't know if I'm funny. Pence doesn't think I'm funny, but Pence owns three joke books, so I really don't give a drop about his opinion.

Give a drop? I came up with that.

But yeah...Hayner's been acting weird. I'm worried about him. I hope he's okay. They said he's okay, that they didn't do anything to him. But why would I believe them, right?

I just really hope nothing bad happened to him because of me. He's one of my best friends.

What if I never see him again? (strike through)

Gotta think positive. Happy thoughts.

Oh man.

[No text on next page. There's a doodle of a compass rose with multiple arrows, pointing in random, contradictory directions.]

It's been a long time. Couple hours, maybe. I don't know. There's no window...

I never finished the story, did I? I should write it down before I forget.

So, I got knocked out, or something mid-jam. I guess they left Hayner there. I mean, if I believe them. Most of them aren't very easy to believe. But I think I know why they want me. I don't know why they want Hay[-]

WHAT IF THEY'VE GOT HIM TO MAKE SURE I DO WHAT THEY SAY?

I didn't think of that. They probably know we're tight...what if they've got Olette? And Pence. Oh no.

Oh no. This isn't good. And it's all my fault...

Wait. No it isn't. It isn't my fault. It isn't. No. It's not my fault that Lusxia (ST) Lusha (ST) Lussa (ST) LOOZA is a giant prick and a half. This is his fault, Dr. Dr. told me.

I haven't gotten to Dr. Dr. yet. See, this is why I didn't like reading a lot in school, people lose track and then they just start putting stuff in confusing order in their books. I guess I can get it now that I'm writing a book.

That's a good one. I'm writing a book. Wait till Larxene hears.

Larxene's my sister. It would've been her here instead of me if Looza hadn't tried to be romantic.

GOTTA STAY ON TRACK

So this big guy loads me into the back of a truck. I woke up once or twice, thought I was dreaming. I see this big dude at the wheel, looked like a tree and a boulder had a baby.

So I'm kinda freaking, and I notice they got my hands tied up. I said something to the driver, like, "Hey, what's up?" or something, my head was hazy.

He didn't say anything. That's Lex. I call him Lex. He's one of the okayier ones.

Well, anyway, we come rolling up to this place sometime before sunrise. Big mansion on the edge of town. Town is Twilight, by the way, in case this diary gets way out of my hands by the time it's done. Twilight's in Colorado, and the Mansion's supposed to be haunted.

Maybe it is. I believe in ghosts you know. Larxene always laughs at me...well, she used to, she doesn't laugh a lot anymore. But I think ghosts are real. But they're not all scary. We just know about the scary ones because they're upset, and what do you do when you're upset? You raise hell.

This place is probably full of ghosts. And I bet none of them are really happy.

"Keep your head down," Lex says to me, and by now he's pretty much dragging me on into the place.

And I keep asking him questions. What's going on, where am I, you know...kidnapping victim questions. He didn't say much else to me.

He takes me up the stairs to this office, where there's music playing and stuff. I recognized a bit of it. We sampled some Judy Collins for this concert in the park thing we did last year. It didn't go over too well. I think it was too sofisticated.

There's this skinny dude sitting at a desk, tapping a pen on it. Really long hair, but he had a tie on, which I thought was weird.

He looks up at me and he says, "This is the boy?"

"I've got a name, man," I say back to him, because, you know, I was kinda sick of being ignored at that point, "Since you guys kidnapped me, you should know it."

"Kidnapped?" he kinda whispered it, looking at me all funny, "That's rich. Kidnapped implys (?) we stand to get something from you."

"You don't?"

He starts rambling to me about Looza. That's Larxene's boyfriend, they work together. I'm not gonna write down everything he said, because he repeated a lot of stuff, and I got kinda confused, and a lot of it was about money, and at one point he just started yelling in, like French or Italian or Japanese or something.

But the idea is...and this is important, because if something really screwed up happens to me, this is probably the only way anyone's gonna know...

My sister's boyfriend found out about some crazy shit they're doing at X-Corp. That's where they work, my sister and him. And he tried to threaten his boss so he could get a promotion or some stupid shit like that, and then they said, "Nice try, man, you can get your stupid promotion, but we want your girl."

AND THE STUPID STINKING PINK BASTARD ALMOST DID IT but he changed his mind, I guess because he really likes Larxene. I don't believe that, I think he just likes having a girlfriend. But I guess I should be glad it isn't Larxene in this stupid hole.

But yeah, that's how they ended up kidnapping me.

So I asked what they need Larxene and then me for, and this guy, he laughs and he says, "We don't need you for anything. If it was me who was trusted with decisions around here, I'd be working out of a state of the art facility with insulated walls and central heating, but no, the company brass would rather traffic in human plush toys!"

"Who're you calling a plush toy?"

Then he screamed at me and started going on and on about how hard he worked and all the stress he was under and I gotta admit, I don't get why he and Looza aren't work friends, they have a lot in common.

Then he stops and says, "I've earned two PhDs, I'm the head of Research, you'd think my opinions have some weight, but..."

And I gotta admit, I was impressed, so I said, "Two PhDs? You can do that?"

He just looked at me like I was stupid, "Well, you certainly can't, but I did."

"So are you, like, a double doctor? Like, do people call you Doctor Doctor?"

He looked at Lex and he said, "You didn't hit him that hard, did you?"

Lex didn't say anything.

"Well, you're an idiot, but at least you're a harmless idiot."

"Gee, thanks, man. So if you don't need me, can I just..."

"Would that I could turn you out. No, I have been ordered to keep you here, and so here you stay. I'm in no mood to invite the corporate cudgel down on me."

I didn't know what that was supposed to mean, but the next thing that happens is he starts screaming some guy's name and then Zex comes in. Zex is the intern, around my age.

That makes me sound like a kid. 'Around my age'. Well anyway, Doctor Doctor looks at Zex and says to him, "You...explain," then he looks at me, and then he looks at Zex, and then he looks at Lex, and then he says, "You will appreciate the sensitive nature of all that is about to be discussed in this room. One loose slip and I may as well jump out the window and get it over with."

"You are sure about this?" asks Lex.

"I'm sure I'm not about to waste resources we don't have on a procedure that won't work," then he turns to me, "I can't get rid of you, but I'm not about to make you into a guinea pig. I've lost my taste for fool's errands."

Then he tells me to follow Zex and I do, down a bunch of stairs, and then an elevator... So, you know, I was pretty confused.

I am pretty confused.

So I ask him, "Hey...um...sup?" You know. Conversation.

"This isn't a joke, you know. A lot of good people are putting themselves on the line for you here."

"Really?"

"Fine. A lot of people are putting themselves on the line for you."

"No, I mean...I don't get it. What were they gonna do to me?"

He looks at me. He's got this really smart look on his face, where it's like he's sizing you up but he's also really bored by what he finds. That haircut doesn't do him any favors. I'd recommend my barber to him, but he doesn't really have a sense of humor. You probably get that.

Do you? I don't know how good I am at this 'writer' crap. You probably don't know what the hell's going on. But I don't know what the hell's going on either, so maybe I am a really good writer.

So Zex says, "I know these aren't the most comfortable circumstances, but trust me when I say they could be much worse. Your sister is safe, and you will be too. We just need you to..."

"Keep my head down?" I guess. Zex looks at me, "You've spoken with my uncle?"

"I dunno if it's speaking if he never spoke back. That big dude's your uncle?"

"I know there isn't much of a resemblance."

"So that's why you have the job?"

Then he looks at me, and I don't know if I said the wrong thing or what, but he just frowns. And I say, "Hey, no offense, man. I'm sure you're really good at...um...this stuff."

And then he's quiet for a while, but he finally says, "Luckily for you, I am."

Then he starts explaining to me how I'm gonna be locked up for a while, like 'the others'. And that got my attention pretty quick.

"Others? Wait, wait, hold up...you mean like...this isn't where all those girls..."

"So you're not an idiot after all. Vexen will be disappointed."

"But...but why?"

"The less you know, the better. Just know you're better off than they are."

And then...Man this is hard. Well I mean I remembered something. One of the girls who's been missing...

"What about the librarian?" And Zex stops and he turns to me, "The librarian?"

"Belle. From Twilight. She...she was my librarian. You guys don't..." But I knew they must have, and Zex didn't tell me they didn't.

"Can I see her?"

And I pretty much expect him to say no. but all he says is, "Maybe. For now, you just have to stay put and avoid lucidity."

"Luce...lucy _what_?"

"Lucidity. Clarity. Sanity. On the off chance that the people running this three ring circus ever decide to have a look at what's going on here, you're going to want to appear the very opposite of lucid."

"So...like... _not_ sane? Insane?"

"If you like. It's what they'll expect."

So I think about that for a bit as we can into this other elevator. There are a lot of elevators here, but I think this was the one that goes deepest. Unless there's another one. Who knows.

"So what you're telling me is...the people you have done these...experiments or whatever on...they're not lucid?"

"They are not."

"So they're...insane?"

Zex didn't say anything, just got out of the elevator in this dark, cold place. I call it the icebox, cause it kinda is. There's all these doors around it, and I guess that's where all the other ones are. But you wouldn't know it just being there. It's really quiet down here.

Hell, but it's really quiet.

So Zex opens up one of these doors and he says, "Make yourself at home."

"I'm gonna be locked up here?"

"You'll get used to it."

"But what about my sister? She's gonna know I'm gone, what if she tries to..."

"I hope for your sake she doesn't."

And I think that's it. He's gonna go and leave me locked up in this place. But then he stops, like he remembered something, and he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out this little notebook and a pen.

"What's this stuff?"

"A journal. You'll want to write down what you're thinking."

"Why? Some kinda...science thing?"

He was quiet, like he was thinking about it. Then he says, "Why not?"

And then he goes away, and I'm locked up in here, in the dark, scribbling in this stupid book.

I'm cold. I'm freaking. And I'm freakin scared.

There. You're all caught up.

MONDAY

[Various doodles. One must be a self portrait, holding a sitar. A quick sketch of a motorcycle. A vague and poorly approximated likeness of a woman sitting on a bench, clapping. There's a caption, 'Books and Beauty'.]

I'm so cold I dreamed my hair was on fire, and I wasn't scared by it.

[Half a page dominated by drawings of tongues of flame. A tall, skinny figure is depicted sitting on one of them, making a gesture that may be finger guns. There's a speechbubble, 'Head up, Rainman'.]

I'm thinking a lot about Belle. I'm trying not to, but there's just nothing else to do, man. You know? I guess I should write a bit about her. But I'm not really good at this kind of stuff. Still. Gotta try. I owe it to her.

But she wouldn't think that. She's really nice. She puts up posters for the band in the reading room. And sometimes, she goes to our gigs and claps. Only the daytime ones.

She's got a really nice smile too. And she's never upset. Even when her douche boyfriend yells at her in in the middle of the street, or when a bunch of kids leave peanut butter stains on the shelves...

That was me. I did that. She doesn't know. I let those kids take the blame for it.

Olette thinks I have a crush on her. Olette thinks everyone's in love with everybody, like on Hearts and Souls.

Hearts and Souls is the best show ever. It's on Channel 4 at 1. It's on today. I wonder what I missed. I don't even know what time it is.

I hope Belle's okay. I know she isn't. But whatever they're doing to her it can't be that bad, can it?

Who am I kidding?

God I am so bored. I don't even

[Writing tapers off into a harsh, abrupt scribble, as if stopped very suddenly. Writing resumes near the bottom of the page with a new heading.]

TUESDAY

Maybe it's still Monday. I don't know. It's nighttime? Man. I don't know. I don't know. I already wrote that. Fuck.

I just did something really bad. I mean I guess I could say they made me. But I still did it. I can't believe it.

My sister was here. Tonight. Right in front of me. She's gone now. I guess I should write down everything as it happened. As I remember it.

This is hard. I can't think straight.

So it was really quiet. Like it always is. I'm antsy, started making beats on the door. With my fingers, you know? I miss being able to just go for my sitar and get going.

And then out of nowhere there's all this noise. Alarms, sirens, whatever. I didn't know what the hell was going on.

Did I write about my fire dream?

Oh. I did. Well, yeah, for a second I thought it was one of those psychic dreams Olette talks about and I was about to get fried. And then there's some noise outside my door, and this little panel thing in it opens, and I see Zex looking in at me from the other side.

I said...and I'm pretty sure about, well, EVERYTHING I said because I was pretty lucid while this was all going on. But anyway, I asked him what was going on.

And he said to me, "Remember your instructions?"

"Which ones? Keeping my head down or acting nuts?"

"The latter."

"So the last one?"

"That's what the latter means, yes. We don't have much time."

"But I don't get it. What's..."

And Zex presses his face up against the door, and his eyes got really urgent, like desperate. And he said, "I don't have time to explain. But somebody will be down here to see you soon, and you have to act like you've lost your mind."

"Who? Your boss?"

"Not yet. Now, can you do it?"

And he seemed really honest about all this, like if I didn't, we were all screwed. I know it's silly, because why should I give a shit if my kidnapper's get screwed over? But I really think these guys don't want anything bad to happen to me. I think they've been telling me the truth.

So I nod at Zex, let him know I've got something in mind. And then he leaves, and I get the hell to work thinking of something.

There's this song I really like. By Bony M. They don't do genre, so I can't say what kind of band they are. But there's this one song...and it's basically the one we play best in the band.

It's Brown Girl in the Ring. You know: 'I remember one Saturday night/We had fried fish and Johnnycakes...' Silly, fun stuff. I always thought it was about this place where there wasn't a lot. Like, they don't have enough water to drink or to wash their clothes or stuff. But they still do the best they can, you know?

I think we've done that, a lot of my life. At least, I tried. But the song drives some people nuts. This guy who bounces at the Cabana, this club we play at, he once threatened to stop booking us if we kept playing it.

I guess it does get stuck in people's heads. And Larxene's always saying it's gonna drive her nuts.

Larxene... But I can't go out of order. Gotta stick to the story. So I sit up against the wall, put this diary behind me, and I start rocking back and forth. The feeble position, or whatever it's called.

And I start muttering the lyrics. The ones about the water, 'All had water run dry. Got nowhere to wash my clothes.'

That's crazy, right? That's what crazy people sound like. I mean, it's not lucid? I told myself, "You got this."

And then the door opens, and Zex is there. And he's with Larxene. My sister. Right there.

Fuck. I don't know if I can write this. But if I don't, maybe I won't believe it's real later. So I should. Even if it's hard.

She goes up to me, and she's really freaked out. She goes, "You must be freezing," like she's my Mom or something.

I guess she kinda is. And she gave me her jacket. I'm wearing it now. It's one of those ugly things she bought for work. But I'm warmer.

I wanted to tell her I was okay, I wanted to ask what the hell she was doing here, if she was in trouble anyway. But I couldn't. And Zex(ST)Zexion he just stood there and watched.

And then she was gone. And I'm alone again.

[A few wavy lines to approximate space. They vaguely resemble ocean currents.]

I'm sorry, Hayner.

I'm sorry, Pence.

I'm sorry, Olette.

I'm sorry, Dickface. (Looza better feed you)

I'm sorry, Axel. I hope you got away after all.

I'm sorry sis. I'm sorry sis. I'm sorry sis. I'm sorry sis.

I miss you, sis.

[The page is noticeably damp in some places, ink has been running. New text on the next page.]

Zexion came by to see me. I guess it's been a while since last night. I don't know what time it is, not really.

I guess lunch? The food he brought was lunch food, sort of. The little flap thing in the door opened up, and he says, "You must be hungry."

"Starving."

Then he shoves a sandwich in the slot. It got stuck.

"Oh, come on..."

"You could open the door."

"Nice try. Besides, I don't have the key."

"You did before. With my sister."

He didn't say anything for a while, and at first I thought he just left, leaving the tuna salad where he'd jammed it.

But then he says, "I'm sorry about that."

"You could've warned me it was my sister, man! Is she...is she okay?"

"She got out of this place, so I'd say she's better off than you."

"And...what's gonna happen to her now? Don't say you can't tell me! Please, I...I don't want anything to happen to her because of me."

"Nothing will happen to her. Not because of you."

I thought about that. Zexion thinks he's smart, like if he says stuff a certain way, I'll be tricked. I'm not that stupid.

"Could you get that sandwich out of the way so I can see you?"

"It's stuck!"

I pulled at it, it came out, and I saw his face. He looked away, like he was embarrassed. He looks really tired. I probably look worse.

"Why was Larxene here?"

"Why else? She was looking for you."

"And now she thinks I'm crazy! What about Marluxia?"

"Presumably, he told her about his plan. But he wasn't with her," he had this look like he was thinking, and then he said, "We have some missing property."

"Property? You don't mean...like...people property?"

"I know, it's distasteful. But two significant projects went missing last night. One that they've been working on for years, and another that was...well...let's call it very sensitive. Vexen had this idea..."

"I thought he didn't need my sister!"

"Not in that way. But she's uniquely positioned to help recover one of our missing projects. And Vexen thought..."

"If she saw me, she would do whatever he said."

"That's the idea. Yes."

"And...and what? You'd fix me up if she does what you want? There's nothing wrong with me."

"She doesn't know that."

"I can't do this! She's my sister, and if anything happens to her while she's running around looking for your missing project, or whatever..."

"It's the best solution, Demyx..."

"I want out! Just, please, man...I'll do anything. But I can't stay here anymore. I've got to get to my sister, I've got to help her. You say you're not some evil mad scientist, then prove it. Show some compassion."

And he got really still, almost angry, "You don't think this is compassion? I'm risking more than some low paying job doing this..."

"So you didn't...cut me open or whatever you did with the others? You're still keeping me a prisoner, using my sister as a...a pawn!"

"I am trying to do the right thing!"

"Well, you're not trying hard enough! Please. Get me out of here."

And he didn't say anything. Just left me alone in the dark with his stupid sandwich.

WEDNESDAY

I had a dream about a river. Big, rushing river, white foam kicking up on the shore. It was so loud, I could hear it roaring. I could smell it too.

You ever smell the river? Once, I went out with my sister and the guys...they all took their bikes out and followed the lake, and then the river. I got to ride on Ax's bike, he convinced her to take me along.

There's nothing more beautiful than water in motion. It's been moving for a hundred thousand billion years, and it'll keep moving after we're gone. And it can't ever stop. But it's controlled, too. It knows where it's going, it isn't just running around crazy.

It knows what it wants.

I miss those days. I miss my friends. My family.

I wish I could help. She's always helped me. How many sisters would give up so much just to babysit their baby brother?

She's giving up a lot now, too. Whatever she's doing for these guys.

She's been alone for so long. She shouldn't be.

Someone's coming. Why do I get the feeling this isn't gonna end well?

[…]

It didn't. I mean, it wasn't what I thought. But it's not good either.

It was Zexion. He did that thing where he opened the panel, looked at me.

"You ate the sandwich?"

"Was it poisoned?"

"If you consider mayonnaise a poison, then yes, it was," and he opens the door, like it was nothing.

"Well?"

"Is this a trick?"

"You've known me a few days. Do you think I have a sense of humor?"

"That was a joke. Kinda."

"I want to show you something."

"This is a trick! What, is Doctor Doctor..."

"His name is Vexen."

"His name is stupid. Is he watching all this on some hidden camera? If I make a wrong move, will he flip a switch and set off some wacky buzzer in my brain?"

"You don't think you'd have notice us put a wacky buzzer in your head?"

"You coulda made it so I forgot that."

And he just raised his eyebrows like he hadn't thought of that. Maybe I was right. Maybe they can do that. Even if...you know. Not to me.

Yet. Hopefully. How would I know?

"Just follow me, alright? Vexen's currently preoccupied with another bit of rebellion, and then it's back to his soap opera. We won't have this chance again."

"Soap opera? You mean Hearts and Souls?"

He stares at me. "What? You don't know Hearts and Souls? It's, like, the best show ever."

"I don't watch television."

"Oh. I guess not. You were probably one of those kids who studied instead of watching cartoons."

"We didn't have a television."

"Oh. Well, neither did we. For a while. We...uh...we were kinda poor. We didn't have T.V till..."

"You stole one?"

"How did you know?"

And he looked at me, "That was supposed to be a joke."

"My sister stole it. I was, like, eleven."

"Your sister..."

"This isn't about her, is it?"

"In a way. You were right, what you said to me before. I shouldn't have sprung that on you. It was cruel of me."

"Yeah. It was."

He sighed, "I am trying to do the right thing. It's just 'good' is an objective term. You don't know what that means, do you?"

"You could tell me."

"Sometimes the good thing to do isn't the right thing to do."

"Um...no?"

"What if doing the good thing in the moment causes more bad things to happen further down the line?"

"Like...you not using me to control my sister?"

"Your sister is a variable, Demyx. So are you, so am I, so is Vexen. So is the man I just untied so he could whisper sweet nothings to his secret love."

"W...what?"

"I told myself about a dozen times what a stupid, reckless thing that was to do as I did it, but...I decided it was a nice thing to do. So I did it. And if it makes either of those two more trusting of me in the long run, so be it. We're all just variables in a very complex equation."

"I'm not a math person."

"But you understand people. Don't you? You're a musician. And Vexen claims that trashy soap opera is a good education on the human experience."

"Well, he hasn't learned anything from it anyway."

And Zex almost smiled. I know it. It was cold as hell and really dark, but I could tell. He thinks I'm funny. I've got to remember that. It might be useful later. A 'variable'.

"In the spirit of charity, I've decided you are owed at least something in return for all you're doing. But it won't be pleasant. Still, it's something you deserve to see."

I began to tell him that I didn't know what he was talking about, but he was already going to the other side of the room. The doors in the Icebox all have letters on them. The one Zex was fooling around with was Letter C.

"Just...brace yourself." And then he opens the door.

Oh man.

"All told," Zexion tells me, "You had a pretty good idea of it."

She was sitting in the corner, not moving at all. Her eyes, those pretty brown eyes, they were just open and...and STARING. Her hair was all tangled...I never saw it outside that little ponytail she always had it in, but it was wild and crazy. You could barely see her face.

Barefoot, like me. Wearing some dirty white smock thing, like the kind they make you wear in a hospital.

"Belle."

"Isabelle Rousseau, yes."

"What did...what did you do to her?"

"Vexen tried to make her into something she wasn't. It didn't work. And now she's...nothing at all."

"Nothing..." I can't believe that. She can't be nothing. But the more I looked at her, the more I think back to her now, writing this...

Her eyes are flat. There's, like, this glassy look to them. Like there's nothing there. I believe in a soul, man. And, looking in her eyes...

It's like someone took it.

"Why are you showing me this?" I asked him.

"Because I feel you needed to see. It's not a nice thing, I know, but...you gain nothing from not knowing."

"And what do I get from knowing?"

Again, it took him a while to answer. But eventually he says, "Closure. And that's more than a lot of us can ever ask for."

"Is there anyway she can be...you know...fixed?"

"I have no idea, Demyx. But I wouldn't get my hopes up. But I will tell you, we have even less than no chance if your sister doesn't succeed."

"So me sitting here, letting her think I'm nuts. It's just another variable."

"I know that sounds cold, Demyx..."

"No," I told him, "I get it."

Before I got locked up again, I told Zex thank you. He didn't get it. I wonder if anyone's ever thanked him for anything before.

So I said, "I don't get what's going on here. But, every day that goes by, I keep thinking maybe you don't either."

"Does that make you feel better?"

"Nah, not really. But...you don't have to act like you have everything under control, you know. Sometimes it's good to just...let stuff happen. Trying to control stuff you can't...it's a drag."

"As big of a drag as being locked in a near-airless closet?"

"Hey, I have no choice. But you..."

"I understand. Goodbye, Demyx."

I don't understand him. But I think I understand him a little better now. He's just a kid after all. My age, just smarter than me. In some ways.

Maybe he's just as scared as I am. Or maybe he's more scared. But if he's trying out 'good' things, maybe there's hope for him.

I hope there's hope for me.

THURSDAY

[A rough sketch of a waterfall cascading down a mountain. There are tiny stick figures bathing in the pool it empties out into. A caption describes, 'Found somewhere to wash my clothes'.]

'LET ME BAPTIZE YOU'- Solo

Come on down to the river baby

I'll wash you up, scrub you down maybe

Scrub that bad stuff away(ee?)

Call me Johnny I'm your Baptist

I know I don't gotta lotta practice

But I wanna deliver

Gotta make you quiver

Wash away your sins

Here down by the river

Hallelujah

Sock it to ya

Let me baptize ya, baby...

Come to me and wash it all away

* * *

Demyx's stomach was turning. As much as he wanted _not_ to look, he had to.

"Is he..." his words were hoarse, scratchy in his throat, "He's not..."

Lexeaus straightened up, "He's dead."

"He can't be!" Zexion's voice was sharp and high. Demyx had never heard him like that before, "He...there has to be some...maybe a concussion? That happens sometimes, head trauma, it dulls the pulse..."

"Believe me, it's been sufficiently dulled," he said it matter-of-factly, crossing to Zexion and putting his hand on his shoulder.

 _He's his uncle_ , Demyx remembered. Somehow he'd let himself forget that.

"I'm sorry, Zexion."

"And well you should be," the cool, yet booming voice as Xemnas reentered the little room. He stood in the doorway, looking at the three of them, and then to Vexen's broken, bloody corpse in the middle, like some really fucked up centerpiece.

"All of you. I'm sure you all thought yourselves wickedly clever, helping Vexen with his little bit of subterfuge. He's paid his price."

"Where is the boy?" asked Lexeaus.

"He's no _boy_. Certainly not now," still Xemnas answered after some brief consideration, "Xaldin's taken care of him. He has a busy morning ahead of him."

"That's your intention?"

"I'm not about to lectured by a lackey, Lexeaus. A _traitor's_ lackey, less so."

"Only that your father tried this same game, and it didn't end well."

"My father was sick, venal and possessed by his own ego. And this time, he has as much a stake in all this as I do." he looked dismissively at Vexen's body, "We must move quickly. After tonight, there will be questions raised, we will all come under scrutiny..."

"And killing a chief executive lessens that scrutiny?" Demyx had never heard Lexeaus be sarcastic before, and clearly this was surprising for Zexion to, who looked at his uncle with a start.

All Xemnas said was, "We must move quickly. _This_ ," he indicated the corpse, "Must be moved quickly."

Lexeaus moved at once, but Xemnas shook his head, "You're with me. This complex has to be as good as condemned before dawn."

"Condemned?" Zexion spoke up, "You mean, we're _leaving_? Just packing up and going?"

"I mean all essential personnel, all those who kept this place running must be out of here before any telltale winds start pointing this way. As for all _inessential_ personnel..." his face communicated his meaning, "Now, both of you..." he nodded from Zexion to Demyx, "Take it and move."

"Take...that... _what_?" Demyx stared at the corpse, "Wait, no, you don't mean like..."

"What are we supposed to _do_ with him?"

"Well, there's no rubbish incinerator on this property. I suppose there's room in the Icebox down below," he glared at Vexen, " _He_ made sure of that, well enough."

"And then?" demanded Zexion, "What then?"

Xemnas was quiet for a long while, "We'll just have to see, won't we?"

And he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him. Demyx breathed a shaky breath, "Oh man..." he turned to Vexen, "Oh jeez..."

"This is terrible!" exclaimed Zexion, falling back against the wall.

"That's...that's a word for it. I just...I never...I never saw someone die before. You know?"

He felt he ought to say something. Besides it just being the nice thing to do, he also didn't like thinking what would happen if the Big Guy decided to come back and saw they hadn't gotten on with hiding the evidence or...whatever this was.

"Hey, um...I'm sorry, man."

" _Sorry_?" as if he'd never heard the word before, "What do _you_ have to be sorry for?"

"Well, I...I mean, I'm sorry Vexen's dead."

"Vexen's half the reason you're here!"

"Eh, it's mostly on Looza. And...well, I guess he's dead too, unless your boss was just talking shit."

"Xemnas never says anything he doesn't believe."

"Still, I'm...I'm sorry for the guy," Demyx nodded back at Vexen, "Listening to him break down like that...It's almost like he felt bad."

"I believe he did, in his own way," Zexion sighed heavily, "Dammit, none of this should be happening. And now he wants us to put him in _her_ cell, I guess he thinks he's very clever, an ironic end... This is all my fault."

"What?" Demyx cocked his head to the side, "Aw, c'mon man...don't say that."

"It _is_! It's my fault! It actually is..."

"Hey, it's not like you had much of a choice! You said yourself, we're basically all here against our..."

"It was _my_ idea!" he cried, and Demyx was shocked to see tears in his eyes, "Mine. Vexen never knew."

"Wait...you don't mean..."

"I knew about his plan, to take Namine's daughter and...fast track Xemnas's insane experiment. He was convinced it would work, maybe it has, but...I couldn't let him _do_ it. Turn a daughter into her mother, then just sic her on the man who's obsessed with her! It's...it's wrong. And you saw a bit of what else we've done here. It's all...wrong, perverted, disgusting..."

"So you..."

"I wanted to expose him. Release Namine into the world, bring the hammer down on this place. It was meant to ruin Xemnas just as much as Vexen. The day Riku arrived here, I undid the emergency locks on the Icebox doors..."

Demyx felt the blood run from his face, "When you came down, to tell me somebody was coming..."

"I'd just released Namine. She was confused, disoriented. But I led her to the exit."

"There _is_ a way out down there?"

"Not a pleasant one. Then I went to tell you to get ready for your sister... That was Vexen's plan, he was in on it..."

"But he never knew about the girl..."

Zexion shook his head, "And he's been killed for it anyway. And now my uncle..."

"He knows too?"

"Found out hours ago. Heard Xemnas was in a rage about whatever happened at that hospital...he confronted me about it, I could never lie to him..."

He broke off, breathing raggedly. Demyx noticed his hand was shaking as he moved it to his brow.

"Hey," he told him, reaching out to grab his shoulder, "You were just trying to do the right thing."

"And look where it got me?"

"Who was the dude that told me sometimes we've got to do some bad things to get to the good ones? Look, it's...it _sucks_ that Vexen's dead. But it's not your fault that your boss is a fucking psycho with a needle full of psycho juice. And, hey...you heard Vexen just like I did. He wanted this all to be over too."

Zexion looked at him for a while, face impassive. At last, he said, "Using my own words against me. Why weren't _you_ the one working for us?"

"Are you kidding? I could never work for the Man."

Zexion rolled her eyes, "Sensible philosophy."

They went on to either side of the corpse. Demyx sighed, "Okay, Doctor Doctor...let's get you to bed."

He was much lighter than Demyx had expected. They were able to carry him out into the dim hallway with little trouble, approaching the elevator (they'd been able to power the thing with an emergency generator or something) to the Icebox.

"We should probably, like, say some stuff."

"I was just starting to appreciate the silence."

"No, I mean...when we put him on ice. You know, like...funeral stuff?"

Zexion eyed him, "Vexen was a deist."

"A who-zit?"

"Like an atheist, but more pretentious."

"Oh..." Demyx hesitated, "Well,we should do something nice anyway. Maybe bury him with something special."

"We're not burying him."

"You know what I mean."

"Vexen's most prized possessions were fruity wines and disinfectant soap."

"What about my diary?"

Zexion stopped short, looked up at him, "Your diary?"

"The one I've been keeping since I got locked up here. It was for, like, Vexen's research right? I mean, I was just starting to get used to the thing, but...maybe we could put it to rest with him. You know?"

And, to Demyx's surprise, Zexion scoffed, rolling his eyes, "The diary wasn't _his_ idea."

"It wasn't?"

"When Vexen said he had no interest in you, he meant it. _I_ wanted you to keep the diary."

"Oh," Demyx considered, "...why?"

Zexion shrugged like it was nothing, "I figured you'd need something to keep you busy. We didn't want you to _actually_ lose your mind."

"Huh..." he nodded, feeling a tiny smile on his face, "Thanks, man."

"What?" Zexion cocked an eyebrow, "Oh. Your welcome."

And they continued on, bearing their sad little load between them, somehow even less heavier than it had been.

* * *

 **A/N:** And there you have it. Demyx is our 11th POV character, Namine having been a red herring following the reveals of last chapter and this one. She basically occupies Kairi's space in the list.

There will be some other 'format screw' chapters in this story, but I don't think we'll be seeing Demyx's journal again. Still, I figured it would be a nice way to explain just _what_ happened to him in his week of captivity while also revealing information that wouldn't necessarily have been made apparent.

A plus-sized chapter next week, as we return to story at large. See you then!


	33. New Game, No Rules

Chapter 33, New Game, No Rules

 **A/N:** And welcome back to Radiant Creatures! Longer chapter this week, in part to make up for the unorthodoxy of the previous one. You'll find that the narrative continues apace, in linear fashion, which is always a nice thing.

* * *

" _Aw, come on sleepyhead. Wake up!_ "

Sora moaned groggily, shifting his head one way, then the other.

"Coupla minutes..." he muttered, indistinct. Sleep felt too good, too rare. He didn't remember the last time he'd just been able to _sleep_.

" _They really did a number on_ you _, didn't they? Well, that's okay._ "

He opened his eyes a fraction, caught a glimpse of a slender figure bending over him, a flash of red hair over one shoulder, head cocked in a curious fashion.

"Y...you?"

" _There's only one_. _Come on, there's a big day ahead of us!_ "

"I...I think I'll pass. Tired."

" _Suit yourself_..." he could almost see that knowing smile on her face. He hadn't seen it in so long.

He should see it. But what if this was just another dream? Another crazy fever trip? He couldn't be disappointed again...

There was a rustling nearby, something warm and wet nuzzling against his face...

"Marie?"

" _Ew. No. Does he_ look _like someone's grandma?_ "

And Sora opened his eyes, coming face to face with a pair of green ones in a black, furry face, "You're...you're not Marie."

"Yeah, no, _obviously_ not. That's Mr. Mew!"

"Mister..."

" _Mew_."

Sora turned to the speaker, and first became aware of a pair of thin, alabaster legs that were probably about half his height on their own.

"And you're not..."

"I'm Shiki!" she grinned at him, adjusting a gray tweed flat cap on her head, "Neku's already told me _all_ about you."

"Neku," Sora sat up, wincing at the soreness in all his limbs, "Yeah. I...I forgot."

"I do that too. A lot. Sometimes I'm lucky I remember what I'm doing half the time, if it wasn't for the others..."

"Others?" Sora looked around, at the big elm tree he'd been sleeping under. Gradually, memories began creeping back into his head.

Darkness, following Neku down some tiny, dusty shaft. A drainage pipe...

"I know what _you're_ thinking!" Shiki singsonged.

"You do?" Sora wasn't even sure what he was thinking himself.

"You can pet him, if you want."

"Oh..." Sora turned to the cat, who was now looking at him expectantly. Clearing his throat, he scratched the cat between the ears, the way Marie liked. The skinny feline closed his eyes and purred contentedly.

"Uh...hey, Mr. Moo."

"Mr. _Mew_. It's like 'meow', but it's 'mew'. And I'm Shiki, like Freaky, but Shiki. You're not?"

"What?"

"Freaked. I know it's freaky. I can't imagine how scared you must be. Actually, I can."

"Huh?"

"That place is terrible..." for the first time, the smile disappeared from her face, "They do...awful things, don't they?"

" _X_ -Corp? You...you were there too?"

"Neku didn't tell you?"

"Neku didn't tell me a lot," he looked around at the woods around them, the leaves falling slowly, steadily from the trees. A soft dawn breeze was whispering through the limbs.

"Yeah...he's the strong silent type. But he thinks you're okay, or else he wouldn't have helped you."

"Nice of him," said Sora dryly.

"He helped me get out too. And then...well, so much time went by, I started to think maybe by helping me, he blew his own chance..." her smile returned, easy as anything, "But he's out now! Looks like I was silly for worrying at all, yeah?"

Mr. Mew was circling Sora's leg, nuzzling up against his thigh. In the light, he got his first good look in some days at the scar that the hellhounds had left behind.

 _Remember that time you were almost dog food?_

Weird. About a week ago, he'd been terrified of dying in a death match. At least then he'd known what to be afraid of. There'd been a clear and present threat.

"So...if you were down there...under the Mansion..."

"For weeks and weeks. Months, maybe."

"And you've been out all this time..." he cocked an eyebrow, "What happened?"

"Well...I got out. Same as you."

"No, I mean...why doesn't everybody know? Like...why didn't you tell anybody?"

Shiki hesitated, "That's...that's not a good idea."

"What do you mean?" Sora couldn't help but feel indignation rising in him as he got, albeit unsteadily to his feet, "What's _not_ a good idea is letting those freaking whack jobs keep kidnapping people and...and experimenting on them..."

Shiki winced, "Well, it's not like I _want_ to keep quiet about it, but..."

"Then don't! You said there are more of you, right? Neku's been running some secret Underground Railroad thing this whole time, there must be enough that _somebody's_ got to believe..."

"Back off her."

He turned abruptly at the familiar voice. Neku, bending under a low hanging branch as he approached. In the daylight, Sora got his first real good look at him. Faded purple hoodie, baggy, ratty jeans, tattered sneakers. He was thin, bony, very pale, though maybe that was just from being locked up down there as long as he'd been.

He had red hair too, like Shiki, but a flaming, _orange_ red. With careful, light blue eyes that surveyed the scene before him with no humor.

Sora broke off, breathing heavily, "You know about this? Your...your friend doesn't want to..."

"Don't be an asshole," Neku said shortly, "I might just feel bad for helping you."

He took a few steps closer. Mr. Mew rapidly appeared to lose interest in Sora, hurrying over to rub up against Neku's legs.

"Don't you think if it was _safe_ to come out about this stuff, they would have? Blown the top off that place, sky high?"

Sora hesitated, "Well, I mean...I didn't think."

"Obviously," Neku looked around, "Listen, we're not flying blind here. I helped you out because, frankly? You're better off on our side than theirs. But we're not in the market for a frigging Messiah."

"That's fine, I don't wanna be one. But..."

"There's no _but_. We're out now. And if we want to _stay_ out, we've gotta do things a certain way," he shoved his hands down deep in his pockets, turning on his heel and starting back through the trees, "You coming or not?"

Sora looked from his erstwhile companion, aghast, back to Shiki, who smiled apologetically, "He takes a little getting used to. But he's right. He'll keep us safe. He _has_."

And Sora sighed, "Fine. Lead the way."

" _He's_ not leading anything," Shiki declared with a toss of her head, "I know where we're going. Try to keep up!"

She moved ahead of Neku at once, Mr. Mew moving deftly beside her. Neku lagged behind a little, looking Sora over.

"You don't get what's going on here, do you?" he asked, unimpressed.

"What gave it away?"

And Neku just shrugged, "You think this is just some game. Good vs. evil. You escape enough dungeons, you win."

"So I'd have been better off just sitting in the dungeon?"

Neku scoffed, "No. But you're only a little better off out here."

Sora rolled his eyes, "Man, what is your problem?"

And Neku stopped short, looking at him piercingly, "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"

And on he went, Sora looking after him, "I...I don't... _what_?"

God help him. He was starting to miss Riku. At least Riku's moods had been predictable. At least Riku had seemed to want the same thing as Sora. To a point.

 _He's still there_ , he realized, _He probably still thinks I'm there._

He didn't even know where he was. He supposed there was nothing he could do about that now. So he swallowed whatever tiny scrap remained of his pride and followed.

Better than just staying put.

* * *

The police station was in a wroth. Dim lights powered by an isolated generator gave the whole place a suffused, drowned quality, masses of people hurrying one way, then the other appearing like one singular dark mass seething and retreating in erratic rhythms, their voices all blending together in a single, chaotic chorus.

" _Schools closed until the power's back on...Mandatory curfew, that's what I heard...All highways closed until they catch him...Who?..._ Him, _what do I know?...It's like a goddamn police state..._ "

"I don't care if you can't get the judge on the line!" Special Agent Duckworth's voice came clearly to Celeste from somewhere across the room, "I need that warrant like I need a cigarette!"

"Donald, it's not like he's not picking up, it's that the phones aren't working..."

He shot down poor Goofy quickly enough, "Then we send a damn carrier pigeon! I need to see those hospital records."

"Records..." Celeste pushed herself from the wall, making her way to the two FBI men, "Excuse me, Agent Duckworth?"

"Eh?" he turned sharply, looking her up and down, "Oh. You. Goofy, tell her I'm busy."

"He's busy, ma'am."

"You're talking about hospital records? Like I told you about?"

"Eavesdropping is rude, and if you ask me, it oughta be illegal. Now, excuse me, before these animated gasbags suck all the oxygen out of this room..."

"That means you're serious? About investigating Xemnas?"

"Ix-nay on the emnas...shay," Goofy blinked at her, "We appreciate your help..."

"But leave us alone."

"But if there are no phones, you can't get that warrant..."

"This has been established, yes."

"Maybe there's something..."

"Oh, look, there's the D.A," Duckworth pointed out a gargantuan female figure screaming incoherently at the other side of the room, "Let me at her."

"Donald!" but he was already off. Goofy looked at Celeste apologetically, "Sorry about that."

And he was gone too. Celeste let out an aggrieved groan. She couldn't just stand by while the closest lead _anyone_ had gotten since this had all began got trampled over by bureaucracy and inconvenience.

It was like a nightmare, but in a different way than so much else that had happened this past week. Now the whole town was plunged into the fever, the terror, the uncertainty. No power, no phones, nobody with more than a fragment of a story, everyone whispering about some murderer, some killer of women that nobody knew anything about...

At least before,Celeste could tell herself that the world would go on turning beyond her own personal turmoil. Now that it was _everyone's_ turmoil...well, she wasn't sure if that was good thing or a very bad one.

"Do I _look_ like I'm joking?" she raised her head at the familiar voice, "Listen, I pay your salary, and it's _hella_ more than I can afford, and clearly more than you deserve..."

"Tiana?" Celeste crossed over to the dispatch where her sole remaining fellow waitress was bent over the desk, railing at a clearly disaffected officer.

"Cel?" she looked at her, "What are you doing..." she trailed off, "Oh. Right, I forgot," she blinked, "They haven't kept you here all night?"

"I'm not feeling very sleepy, believe it or not."

"I am _so_ sorry. I know you and..."

"Thank you." she looked from Tiana to the dispatcher, "What's up with you? What are you doing here?"

"Oh, well, I'm _trying_ to get a word in edgewise with these people, but I'm apparently 'hysterical'..." she made exaggerated air quotes with her fingers, " _First_ of all, that's bull, and _second_ of all, even if I _was_ , who could blame me, right? I mean..."

"No, you're right. In their defense, all their detectives are either working elsewhere, kidnapped or wanted for kidnapping."

"What?"

"I don't know, you hear things around this place," in a softer voice, she tried, "What's up?"

"It's...well...I guess I might as well tell you, if nobody here is gonna believe me..."

"I know the feeling," Celeste nodded to the door, "Still, if it's gotten _you_ so riled up..."

"I can _get_ riled up. It's just that I'm good at hiding it. But since Aerith..." she trailed off, "It's been hard keeping it together sometimes. And it's not like I didn't _try_ telling myself I was losing it over nothing, but now..."

She was interrupted by the screechy exclamations of Agent Duckworth, who was caught up in a particularly spittle-filled altercation with D.A. Hartford.

"Since I've been here, I've gotten nothing but double talk, empty promises, and probably diphtheria from that petri dish you call a bathroom! I've gotten better service at freeway truck stops!"

"You think I _like_ watching the madmen run the asylum? I don't need some New York yuppie to come stumping in here and telling me how shitty my district is!"

"New York? Lady, I'm from Kansas! We had a post office, a gas station, and a rock to kick around in the street, but I still made FBI, what the hell is _your_ excuse..."

" _That's_ the FBI?" Tiana cocked an eyebrow Donald's way.

"His partner's nicer," Celeste turned to her, "But back to you. What's wrong, honey?"

"It's just..." Tiana shrugged, "I think I may have witnessed a crime?"

She blinked, "You...you _think_?"

"I know, that's pretty weak, but I've been thinking about it, and, like I said, at first I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, because...who knows what it was, right? But now with this blackout and...everything else that happened last night..."

"Why take any chances?"

Tiana nodded, "Two nights ago, I was heading into Traverse for my gig. And...I think it was at the Beaumont Station, I saw those kids."

"Kids?" Celeste cocked her head to the side, "You don't mean..."

"Chanteuse, football, and the drip."

Celeste nodded slowly, "Selphie, Tidus and Zack. I know they came back late, Zack's mother was worried, she'd just got back to town..." she stopped herself, an icy chill passing through her, "Wait. You said Tidus was there too?"

"He's the blond one, right? Yeah, they ran right past me on the platform, and there was this guy..."

"They were there. All three of them," Celeste breathed, "At the hospital, last night, we...Amphitrite, Zack's mother and I, we were talking about that. I thought it was odd Tidus wasn't there when Lucrecia found them..."

Tiana's face fell, "Oh God."

"I'm sorry, I keep interrupting. What happened? You mentioned some guy..."

"Yeah, some guy. And since I walked through those doors, he's got a face and a name."

At Celeste's inquisitive expression, Tiana nodded past her to a poster that has been crudely taped to the dispatch desk.

A mugshot, black and white, of some scowling young man with a crew cut and a distinctive scar. Celeste didn't think she'd ever seen him before.

"Seifer Almasy," she turned back to Tiana, her heart pounding in her chest, "You saw him on the platform?"

"Son of a bitch pushed right past me. Then the girl, she grabs the guys and they jump onto the local as it pulls in. He gets on in the car behind them. By the time I got up, I'd missed the train. But I _know_ what I saw," she hesitated, "I should've said something at the time. If I'd known one of those kids didn't make it back with the other two..."

"No," said Celeste, "No. It...it wouldn't have occurred to most people," she looked back at Seifer Almasy's wanted poster, "He broke out of holding the same night."

"One of the Earthshakers. Chapter leader. I know that kid..."

"Riku," Celeste nodded, "He's one of them too."

"Do you think, maybe whatever happened to Tidus..."

Celeste turned back, "Happened to Sora? Tiana, I don't..."

"I just feel so stupid. I should've done something right then..."

"Something startling happened to you in the middle of the night, and you weren't even sure what it meant until later. That's perfectly understandable. I'm more upset at the people who _have_ some power and aren't getting anything..."

"All I'm saying is, you'd be doing more good running down to the judge and getting that warrant than standing here and yelling at everything with a pair of eyes!"

Hartford barked back at Duckworth, "Do I look like the damn Pony Express? You want a warrant, you drive down to the judge and you ask for one!"

"I am an agent of the FBI! As long as I'm here, I have jurisdiction! Didn't they teach civics when you were in school, or hadn't they invented that yet?"

"It doesn't matter much anyway," Celeste said with a sigh, turning back to Tiana, "You could've told them the minute after it all happened, they wouldn't get anything done. Amphitrite was right about that much. This whole town is run on bureaucracy at best."

"And at worse?" Tiana cocked an eyebrow.

Celeste sighed, "I think we're only beginning to find out."

"Thanks for your time, ma'am," Goofy's voice now. Celeste craned her neck to see the door to the interrogation room opening, as the lankier and better natured FBI man emerged, escorting a big, fleshy creature in a grotesquely patterned cardigan.

"Roz," Celeste breathed.

"We must have a dozen regulars with those same glasses, you know her name?"

"I don't know if she's ever been to Cid's. But I know her. She does intake at the hospital. She was on duty yesterday."

"Why are the feds talking to her?"

"I told them about her," Celeste said flatly, "She saw the CEO of _X-_ Corp there yesterday. If he went up to Namine's room...again..."

"Again?" Tiana looked at her, incredulous. Celeste only nodded, "...she could corroborate it. But there are no physical records. No sign in, nothing. Apparently, he doesn't even show up in security footage."

"But you saw him?"

"And it's my word against the hospital's. He's on the board, you see."

"Why would this guy want anything to do with that girl? Or her grand..." she trailed off, changing her emphasis, "Mother?"

"They have a history, but that's all I know. And I know that woman, Roz, I know she's lying. He's got her in her pocket, promised her a..."

She trailed off, her eyes widening, "Oh my God."

"What? Celeste?"

"That's it," she realized, "Of course! It makes perfect sense."

She was already pushing her way through the crowd, making for the door. Tiana was right behind her, "Wait! Celeste? What makes sense?"

"Do you have a pair of scissors?"

"Huh?" she looked at her as if she'd lost her mind.

"Or, um, tweezers? Anything sharp."

"Celeste, I don't..."

"I have to cut open a chair."

Tiana didn't look any more convinced of Celeste's faculties, but bless her, she followed her to the car all the same.

* * *

"Are you sure about this?"

"That's not a fair question, whenever I feel sure of something, the sky starts falling."

"I mean...do you think he's legit?"

Selphie folded her arms and, almost in the same motion as Zack, turned to regard Irvine, who was sitting at the kitchen table (Amphitrite's kitchen; apparently Zack's Mom hadn't felt comfortable going right back to sleeping in the murder scene), cowboy hat off and down by restless fingers, which were drumming with no particular rhythm on the wood surface.

"He's about as _ill_ egit as they come, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's lying."

"Hey, I told Selphie already..." he spread his arms wide, "I wouldn't lie about shit like this. I'm not _that_ scummy."

"It's just...it doesn't make a lot of sense," said Zack.

"So it fits right in with everything else," Selphie crossed over to the big sofa and sat on one of the arms, crossing her legs, "I shouldn't have let him run off."

"You didn't..." Zack began, but Selphie spoke over him, feeling a note of hysteria creep into her voice before she could take the mallet to it again.

"It wasn't even _running,_ he was _hobbling_ on a bad leg, a leg which I _should_ have asked about, but I didn't, and I let him _hobble_ away and get kidnapped. _Dammit_!"

Zack sighed heavily, shoving his hands into his hoodie, "Selphie, it's not like we just abandoned him..."

"No, you're right, he said some stupid jackassy stuff. But it was _Tidus_ and frankly, I should have expected that, and considering we were kind of in a high stakes situation, I probably shouldn't have been so quick to let him strut his stuff away..."

"We don't know if that's why it happened!" said Zack, "Those guys that grabbed him...that could've happened to any of us. Right?" he looked urgently at Irvine, who bit his lip and shrugged.

"I mean...maybe? Look, I'd just climbed on board too, I was kinda out of breath, trying to keep up..."

" _Stalking_ , Irvine,you were out of breath from _stalking_ ," Selphie felt compelled to correct him.

Irvine shrugged, "You were being chased, I was _worried_! And, hey, if I hadn't, you wouldn't have known about _any_ of this."

"Gee, thanks," Zack muttered, "I mean...it's better to know, obviously..."

"I think what he's trying to say is you don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to the fruit of honesty, Irvine."

"Dude, we barely know each other!"

"He knows me," said Selphie, "I know you."

"You said you believe me!"

"Yeah, but I get why someone wouldn't," she rolled her eyes, "That doesn't matter, anyway. What _matters_ is that Tidus is...gone."

"Grabbed," said Irvine, "I'd say 'kidnapped', but that's kinda stupid."

"Why would anybody kidnap Tidus?" asked Zack.

"I know, right? Dude's practically worthless."

Zack glared at Irvine, who shrugged, "I mean...I was also wondering that."

"You don't know where they went?" asked Selphie, determined to get things back onto something at least loosely approximating a track.

Irvine shook his head, "Sorry, Selph. I was hunkered down behind the seats, I didn't want to get my ass grabbed too.."

"Maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?" asked Zack, "I mean...we kind of have a habit."

"They _did_ take that other guy too," said Irvine, "Maybe that's all they wanted, but they didn't want any witnesses either."

"He was chasing us first," said Selphie, "All the way from the first station. Said he knew about Cl..."

Zack tensed. Selphie held off, "He said he wanted to help us. And, like a big baby, I ran away."

"Yeah, well, he wasn't exactly a trustworthy looking guy. It's not your fault..."

"Zack, _I'm_ the one who ran from...from whoever he was the first chance I got. _I_ dragged you and Tidus away with me. Hell, bringing Tidus along was my big flipping idea in the first place..."

"And _going_ to Twilight was _my_ idea," said Zack, "I brought you into it. Just like I brought you into all of this. If anybody should be beating themselves up about this, it's not you, Selphie, it's me."

There was a pregnant pause. At last Irvine leaned forward and said, "Well...it's not my fault."

Selphie snatched a knitting magazine from the sideboard and tossed it at him. Irvine ducked automatically, "And, anyway...it's not like we're getting anywhere deciding who gets to wear the shame hat."

"Shame hat?" asked Zack.

"Yeah, you know, that pointy thing, it's kinda like a wizard's hat, they make you wear it when you've been stupid..."

"It's a _dunce_ cap, you dunce!" exclaimed Selphie, "Oh God..." she rolled her eyes, but forced herself to remain on track.

Ugly as it was to admit it, Irvine had a point. She wasn't going to concede that to him, but he did. They were getting nowhere by arguing about guilt.

"So what do we do?" she looked from one boy to the other, "We've got to _tell_ someone, obviously."

"Tell who? The cops?" Irvine said the word as if he were pronouncing some vile fungal infection which, knowing him, he might just be familiar with.

"No, Irvine, the Temptations," she rolled her eyes, "It's another missing kid. Maybe it's the same people..."

"I don't know if you've noticed this, Selphie, but the cops are kinda useless."

"Says the junior drug dealer."

"It's not like I'm selling _heroin_! And, anyway, they never caught me, have they?" he pointed at her, "See? Totally useless."

"He's got a point."

"Thanks."

Zack sighed, "There's a county-wide blackout, Selphie. They've got their hands full already. We take it to them, who knows how long it takes... I mean, they got on Sora and Kairi's case last week, and that's not getting started on all those other girls..."

"So what do you suggest? Because the vigilante justice thing didn't work out all that well last time."

"That was different. That was...trying to find a friend."

"That cop you were looking for?" asked Irvine.

"None of your business," Selphie told him.

"Uh, I don't know if you've noticed, Selph, but we're kinda _sharing_ business now. It's only fair. You guys are up to something. Been up to it. And now it's gotten one of you in trouble."

Zack stepped forward, "Back off, man. It's not Selphie's fault."

"Oh, here we go again..."

"Don't interrogate Zack, he owes you less than nothing..."

"I'm just saying, it seems to me, we're all in this together, so keeping secrets is kind of a moot..."

"It's my brother."

Selphie stared at Zack, eyes wide. Irvine just blinked, "Your whatsit?"

"My brother. Cloud. He...he left home years ago. None of us knew where he went. Then, Sunday night, he just...came back."

The effort to speak was clearly costing him a great deal. Selphie was inclined to step forward, put a hand on his arm, his shoulder, to steady him, comfort him.

But that would probably just embarrass him. She knew it would definitely embarrass Tidus. But, then, she doubted Tidus would ever be compelled to deliver a speech like this anyway.

The thought made her sad, but for a reason she couldn't entirely explain.

"Then...the night Namine showed up in town."

"You mean Not-Kairi?"

"He means shut up and let him finish," said Selphie tersely. Irvine shrugged, turning back to Zack.

"That night, his old girlfriend came back to our place. And...she was killed. And Cloud was gone."

Irvine stared, eyes wide. The color had gone a little from his face.

"So...so that's gotta mean...your...your _brother_..."

The door opened with an abruptness that startled them all. Irvine yelped, nearly falling from his chair. Zack cried out. Selphie pressed her hand to her heart, which had skipped a beat and had set to performing some erratic tap dance against her rib cage.

"Mom?" Zack breathed.

"Oh, thank God you're here..." she paused in the doorway, looking around at them all, "You're Selphie?"

She sounded like she was afraid just to speak the name, which wasn't nearly as gratifying as Selphie might have imagined it would be.

"Aw. You remember. Yeah, hope you don't mind, we were just..."

"And...and you?" she looked at Irvine, and her brow furrowed.

"Oh, I'm Irvine," he lifted his hat from the table in salute, "Howdy?"

Zack's Mom surveyed him through filmy lenses. Selphie realized she was wearing the same clothes she'd had on when she nearly ran her down. Yesterday morning.

"Irvine..." she repeated softly, "Oh. I...I don't think we've ever met."

"Aw, nah, I'm sure I would've remembered..."

Zack picked up the knitting magazine and made a subtle, but present swinging motion toward Irvine, who desisted.

"I just..." she looked back at Zack, "I never knew you had so many friends."

What followed was a silence so replete and so painful Selphie almost wished the woman would just grow a pair and yell at them for being teenagers or else just pass out drunk on the floor like a normal parent at this hour of the morning.

But all she did was bend her head and break down sobbing.

Selphie wasn't sure how she must look, but Irvine was positively petrified. Zack hurried over to his mother's side, just as taken aback, "Hey, hey Mom...Mom, are you..."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she threw her arms around him, "God, I am...I am so, _so_ sorry son..."

Irvine leaned in close to Selphie and whispered, "We sure the crazy thing doesn't run in the family?"

She gave him a murderous glare.

"Mom, you've...you've got nothing to be sorry about..."

She shook her head, looking up and around at all of them, "It's...it's the hospital. Last night..."

Selphie felt something like a cold hand gripping her heart. She stepped forward, saying in a hush, "You don't mean...Namine?"

"Namine...oh God..." she raised a hand to her mouth as if to steady herself. Zack never took his hand from her shoulder.

"It's not Namine..." she said at length, "It's her mother."

Selphie understood at once. She could feel the temperature in the room drop. Zack looked at her, eyes wide. There were tears there too now.

"I am so sorry..." his mother continued, sobbing weak, brokenly, "So, _so_ sorry..."

Selphie didn't know what she had to be sorry for. Maybe she was just taking the blame onto herself, just like she had been, and Zack.

She couldn't imagine what the hell she was guilty for.

 _Unless she knows,_ she thought with a chill, _Unless she knows everything about her son. Just as much as we do. Maybe more._

Zack must be guilty too, then. He shouldn't be, but he must be.

And Selphie was guilty too. She could feel it in her like a poison, corrosive and complete. And no well meaning boy could talk her out of feeling it.

* * *

He was free in his dreams. Free, strong, full of purpose, a relentless drive, an indefatigable will.

They weren't really dreams. He'd figured that out by now. Memories, he supposed...vivid recollections from someone he had been.

But they felt like dreams. Crisp, vivid, and moving in weird, erratic rhythms. Actions didn't seem to follow each other naturally.

There were hiccups and stops. Sometimes he would see the same thing over and over again.

Deserts...he saw a lot of deserts. Wide, sandy, windswept landscapes, stone cracked by thousands of years of hot, hot sun. He could feel it beating down on him. His shirt was stuck to his back.

Footsteps taken along a winding road. Dusty asphalt. Actual tumbleweeds, big clods of dead plants just rolling across the path.

A dry place. A dead place. The Land of Opportunity.

But he could not despair. Despair was foreign to him, and work was innate, bred into his blood.

Stopping at a bend in the road to catch his breath, he looked up...and beheld the high steel towers, rising like deformed skeletal protrusions to pierce the blinding blue sky.

 _Black gold. The blood of the Earth_.

And he was going to have to drain it. And then...well, then anything was possible.

Groaning softly, Riku opened his eyes. Something soft and papery had fallen against his face. A leaf, a dried autumn leaf, fluttering gently down from the treetops above.

He was outside, outside and in the fresh air of the morning. Sparse woods stretched out in every direction.

"Wha..." he began faintly, "What..."

Xemnas. He remembered now. Slowly, Riku raised his hands to his face. They were clean now, clean but still red and, if he closed his fingers, still sore.

Vexen's blood had been warm and wet on his hands. On every part of him. Just like Pete. He'd so easily forgotten about Pete. Or maybe one of the others had made him forget. Not Xehanort, that didn't seem like his style.

The other...well, Riku knew so little about the other.

" _Vexen may have been content to poke and prod and see what could be gotten from you_..." Xemnas had told him, "... _You'll find I prefer to take the initiative. Time is a luxury and there is precious little room for luxury here._ "

His instructions... He'd been given instructions.

"... _He is in the wind now, and he is not alone...all I have worked for...all_ you _worked for before me is on the line. You will bring him back._ "

"Bring him back..." Riku whispered.

He did, didn't he? But not back to Xemnas. He'd sooner die.

Groaning softly, he got to his feet. He was better dressed now, he noticed. Boots, a light jacket. Not _his_ jacket. He'd lost that one a while ago.

He'd have to make do. And he had to find him. Before any of the others could.

He owed him that. And so much more.

* * *

Selphie had struggled to maintain her composure, to keep cool. The entire way to the DPD, she'd been biting back the urge to just erupt into peals of hysterical cry-laughing.

She didn't know why it was so easy to accept that Aerith had been killed, a girl only a few years older than Selphie, in the prime of her life and all that. But it was so, so _hard_ to imagine Kairi's grandmother, staid, wizened, always complaining Amphitrite had ended up the same way.

"It's a cliché, I guess," she said softly as they moved from Zack's Mom's car into the station, "But it really felt like she would be around forever."

"I know," agreed Zack, "She had more life in her than me, sometimes. I can't believe how hard my Mom is taking it."

"Were they friends? I was kinda under the impression she was just leasing you to her as a live-in nurse."

"Well...kinda. But they still went way back. Amphitrite helped her get her first big job."

"Really sucks about Kairi," said Irvine, trailing a little way behind them, literally and figuratively, it seemed, "They ever get her back, she'll have to hear her Granny got murked."

Selphie scowled distastefully, "Classy, Irvine."

"Wait..." Zack turned to him, "You actually think the other girl...you think she's really..."

"Hey, I dunno. I just figure, if she was Kairi..."

"She _is_ Kairi, broccoli for brains. Whatever her grandma believed, there's no voodoo at work here."

"How do you know? You a voodoo expert?"

"I'm an expert on bullshit."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Years of experience. 'Namine' _is_ Kairi. It's just that whoever took her did some freaky shit to her and now she thinks she's her mother."

"See, that sounds kinda like voodoo."

"Shut up," she paused, looking around. Lucrecia had separated from them almost as soon as they'd arrived, and was now being spoken to by one of the cops. Selphie wondered what they were asking about.

"Where do you think..." Zack began. Selphie shrugged, "Well, they say if you don't know where to look, ask an adult."

"And if the adult doesn't tell you because adults are fascist?"

"You can't even spell fascist, Irvine."

"Ha! Fuck you, I can. 'F-A-H-S..."

"No, dude, it's 'F-A-S-T..."

"That's _fastest_ , fuckweed..."

"Well, you were wrong too!"

How nice that they were getting along. If Tidus were here, he might weep and then punch them both in the solar plexus.

But she shouldn't think of Tidus.

She approached the dispatch desk, the picture of pleasant girldom, as you please.

"No, you're not understanding me, it has nothing to do with him..." a woman, speaking in a frantic, rushed voice. She was bent practically double over the desk, positioned so rigidly Selphie suspected all it would take was a stiff wind to push her right over.

She couldn't make out a face, but...her hair. A strawberry blond bowl cut.

"Forget it," she straightened up, "This was the wrong idea."

"Ma'am..." but she was already walking away. Selphie was quick and made sure to appear as unobtrusive as possible, just to get a good look at the woman as she walked past.

Tidus's Mom.

 _Reporting him missing, probably,_ she realized, _What was it she said that night? There's a cancer killing her family_...

And Selphie was spreading it.

She was tempted to go after the woman, see what she knew, or didn't know. There had to be some reason she'd walked away without filing a report, or something.

 _Don't be stupid, she'd never tell you a thing. She hates you. And maybe she has a good reason._

No, if she wanted to learn anything, she'd have to continue on her current course. So she presented herself at the desk, trying _not_ to look at all rattled by the recent encounter.

"Excuse me."

The dispatcher eyed her wearily. Clearing her throat, Selphie continued, "Busy day, huh?"

"You have an emergency?"

"Well...I'd say we've _all_ got an emergency, right? I mean...if we're being honest with ourselves..."

"Listen, kid, the DPD's got their hands full enough without you wasting my time."

"Well!" Selphie crossed her arms, "I'm sorry for interrupting all the work you're doing. What's that? Today's crossword?"

She got up on tiptoes, the better to get a look at the desk. The dispatcher gave a short exclamation of protest, moving his chair back...

"Ooh, nope, just Sudoku. So sorry I misjudged. What, is the town serial killer sending you number puzzles now? _So_ Victorian, am I right? _Puh_ -lease."

"Back off, kid."

Selphie stepped back, smirking, "Fine. You have a nice..."

Her eye settled on something pinned up on the dispatch desk, and her words curdled in her throat.

"Bye," she said abruptly, hurrying away from the desk.

"I'm telling you, it's gotta be F-A-E-S-C-E..."

"Why are you still spelling?" she demanded.

"We were saving shapes till you got back," quipped Irvine.

"What's up?"

"The guy!" she blurted at once, "Him, the guy, I saw him..."

"You're gonna have to be more specific, Selph..."

"Wait," said Zack, "You mean the guy from the train."

"Yes! Yeah, I saw him..."

"Well, holy shit," said Irvine, "Where is he?"

"I didn't see _him_ , I mean, I saw a picture of him. A poster, he has a wanted poster. He broke out of jail."

"Hey, maybe that's how he knows your brother," said Irvine. Zack scowled at him.

"He broke out the same night we saw him. The poster says he's a biker."

"A biker?"

"One of the Earthshakers. He's wanted for questioning in...well, I couldn't see, it was tiny print."

"Well, that's not so weird," said Irvine.

"What, they I need glasses?"

"That the guy got grabbed. The biker gangs are always fighting. Maybe one of the rival gangs was trying to prove a point."

"And Tidus?"

He shrugged. Selphie rolled her eyes, "Forget it. I know where Namine is."

"They told you?"

"You kidding? I snuck a peek at Mr. Personality's clipboard."

"How'd you figure that out?"

"Oh, it was easy, I just used number puzzles to imply he was less than a man. Come on."

And she started off across the room, the guys close behind. The room was a tiny place near the back of the station. Selphie supposed it was normally used for interviews. There was no guard posted at the door. Maybe they just didn't have enough people free for the job. Or maybe the usual local negligence Amphitrite had always warned them about.

Looking first one way, then the other, and thereby determining that she could probably have a heart attack right here and now and nobody would notice, Selphie hurried over to the door and slipped through, Zack and Irvine right on her heels.

Namine didn't look up at them as they came in.

In a lot of ways, she looked just the same as she had when she'd wandered onto the football field during the school assembly. Rumpled white hospital gown...though, comparatively cleaner. Tangled hair, wide, staring eyes.

That was what got to Selphie the most, the eyes. They were _Kairi's_ eyes. She didn't get how anybody could see otherwise.

"Hey...Namine?" she asked softly.

"I thought you didn't think..." but Zack must have shut Irvine up. Good. Selphie couldn't look away from Namine to do the job herself.

She just sat there. Still. Staring, rocking softly back and forth.

"Kairi?" she tried.

Nothing. She may as well have been talking to a statue.

* * *

"Are you _sure_ he's not here?"

Roz blinked at Tiana with all of her typical reptilian charm, "He wasn't here the last three times I checked. He isn't here."

"But...but where else could he be?" Tiana's lower lip trembled with what Celeste had to admit was a professional-caliber degree of misery, "Oh God, I _never_ should have snapped at him, I don't know what I was thinking..."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually."

"It's just, he gets so _cocky_ sometimes, I couldn't help myself, and I had to tell him to stuff it. Like, who did he think he was? I didn't mean to get _rid_ of him..."

"He sounds like a real catch," Roz said humorlessly.

Tiana grew quiet at once, slowly raising her head as she said, in a dangerously quiet voice, " _What_ did you say?"

Celeste took this as her cue to move, but quickly and quietly, from the corner of the lobby where she'd been lurking to creep closer to the desk. Roz had gotten to her feet, "Why don't you just go and look for your Prince Charming somewhere else, sweetheart?"

" _What_ did you call me?" Tiana lunged onto the desk.

"Why don't you just calm..."

"I _know_ you didn't just tell me to calm down!"

Celeste lowered herself to a crouch and, grabbing the pair of safety scissors Tiana had lent her (apparently you can never be too careful), got to work on Roz's freshly vacated chair. The cushion _was_ irregularly shaped, but that might just be down to someone of Roz's...stature inhabiting it with such frequency.

"You're making a scene..."

" _You_ are trivializing my problems!" Tiana was on a role now, "Maybe it doesn't mean anything to you that I dropped out of school for this guy, that he promised me the moon, said I saved his life. But to _warm-blooded_ creatures like me, that means something, and if he's gone off to prove a point, and something happens to his stupid ass because of me..."

"Honey, I am trying to do my job."

"You are a soulless _toad_! What's a woman like you even _doing_ working in Human Resources?"

"You'd be very surprised."

Celeste bit back her own gasp of surprise, reaching into the newly opened cushion and coming directly into contact with a sheaf of papers, hastily stuffed inside.

Moving as carefully as she could, she started back from the desk...

And felt her leg brush up against the leg of the chair, moving it. With a croak of alarm, Roz turned around, her eyes bugging out of her skull behind those rhinestone-studded glasses.

Celeste stared up at her, her hand shaking as she held the papers, "Hello again."

Her next action came to her mind without any thought. She kicked the chair over, letting it fall into Roz's path as she scrambled to her feet.

"Come on, come on!" she cried to Tiana, aware of Roz stumbling over the chair as she ran off.

"You got them?" Tiana asked, running at her side.

"You bet I got them!" Celeste nodded to the door, "Come one, before she calls security!"

"Why _would_ she? She does that, she'll have to explain what she did."

"Oh," Celeste realized, an inexplicable laugh escaping her lips, "She would. She _would_!"

Tiana laughed too, throwing the door open and starting down the road, "Celeste, I didn't think you had it in you."

Celeste grinned back at her, "Neither did I. Thanks for that distraction, by the way."

"Was it convincing? I kinda pulled the whole thing out of my ass."

"She probably did the same thing to the cops, they fell for it."

"True enough. Maybe I can try for some commercials when moonlighting at the club stops paying off," she unlocked her car, sliding it behind the wheel as Celeste got into the passenger seat, "You think he has something on her?"

"Who? Xemnas?" Celeste shrugged as Tiana started the engine up, "He's on the board, he could probably whisper a few words to the right people, get her fired."

"I almost feel bad."

"Almost..." muttered Celeste, looking the log sheets over and nodding with approval, "Yeah. These are the ones. Xemnas showing up yesterday, the day before... She even wrote down which ward."

"That doesn't put him right in the girl's room, though."

"No," Celeste agreed, "But why else would she hide it?"

"Think the feds are gonna be convinced?"

"They're a bit scatterbrained, those two," Celeste conceded, "But they mean well. And I think they know what they're doing. They'll have to ask questions at least."

They reached the DPD before too long, only to find a sizable crowd assembled out front, gathered around the station's entrance, where a podium had been put up.

"Press conference?" asked Tiana, "Without TV?"

Celeste looked over the considerable knot of humanity assembled down the entire block, "Maybe they don't need it."

"Parking's about to be fun."

The station's own parking lot was full, forcing Tiana to go a block away for parking.

"Thanks, Tiana," Celeste told her as she turned off the engine.

"Hey, don't mention it. If it helps you find your kid..."

"I have to hope it will," Celeste opened the door, "I'm gonna find those agents, and I'm gonna make sure they get their hands on these."

"You'll be alright on your own?"

"I've already asked you to do enough. Head home, get some rest."

Tiana seemed to consider, but she nodded, "Good luck, Cel."

Celeste nodded at her, turning on her heel and starting up the block, the papers in hand. Almost at once, she became aware of a familiar voice, characteristically unctuous, ringing up and down the block.

"Without stating conclusively," a heavy harrumphing, "Evidence has emerged to suggest this blackout was the work of sabotage. Yes, yes..." as if to quell a hum of controversy that, as far as Celeste could hear, had not occurred, "Sabotage!"

Celeste drew closer, observing the police commissioner standing at his podium, flanked to one side by the District Attorney, and on the other a tall, smarmy looking individual in a silk suit.

Celeste realized with a lurch that she had seen him before, on the TV.

Hades, so-called Lord of the Dead.

An indistinct question from the crowd. Ratcliff nodded, "Well it would appear that the power outage was, in fact, the work of one of the biker gangs..."

A much louder hum, people whispering, reporters hastily writing things down in their little tablets. Celeste slowed down, remembering the Wanted Poster, the man Tiana had recognized...

"No, I assure you," Ratcliff continued, "That matter is being thoroughly investigated. As for restoring power to the county..."

The other man stepped forward to the podium, "I'll take it from here, Chief."

Ratcliff looked mildly miffed by the address, but stepped aside all the same, allowing Hades to step forward.

"Hey, hello, how you all doing?" he rattled off the three greetings in quick succession, "Seems we were only just here, yeah?"

The other press conference, the night Namine had arrived in town. Something about an accident at one of his shipping warehouses. Celeste hadn't been paying attention. She quickened her pace all the same, moving into the crowd, trying to spot either of the two agents moving among the masses.

"You'll be happy to know Erebus Shipping is doing their part to get the lights back on. I know, I know...what business does a shipping company have working with exposed power lines?"

One or two pained chuckles from the crowd. Hades seemed satisfied with this, "Well, fact of it is, the yahoos who _normally_ keep your lights on were doing it with hardware older than Tommy Edison, so it's no surprise some punk hoodlums had their way with it. Erebus is outsourcing the work to some more...capable contractors, and we'll be right on the scene making sure some semblance of civilization is restored to this place."

There was a smattering of relatively unenthusiastic applause. Hades brushed at some invisible ruffle in his jacket, looking around, "Questions? Come on, fire away. I don't bite. Not today, at least."

At last, Celeste caught sight of Goofy, his head poking out somewhere at the far end of the crowd. She quickened her pace to catch up with him, "Agent Guffstein!"

Hades looked around the crowd, "Nothing? Nothing at all. Aw, come on, fellas..."

"Agent!"

He didn't turn to regard her. Celeste rolled her eyes, "Goofy!"

He turned to her, nodding, "Hiya, Zest. What's on your brain?"

Hades sighed aggrievedly, "No questions? Really? Come on, go ahead. Hit me..."

An earsplitting road cut into the rest of his words. The noise of an engine tearing up a road. Several heads turned. Celeste's included.

She could make out a motorbike, roaring up the road, a helmeted figure bent down at the handlebars, obscuring his face...

She heard Goofy cry out next to her, "Get down!" as he pulled her by the arm. She felt her knees come down hard against the asphalt, nearly losing her grip on the documents in her hand.

In the next instant, there was an earsplitting bang. People screamed. Celeste knew she shouldn't look up, but she did, for a fraction of a second...

Enough time to see Hades drop to his knees beside the podium, D.A. Hartford swear explosively...and Commissioner Ratcliff to stagger backward, face frozen in an expression of petrified terror, as a hole was opened dead center in his chest.

* * *

 **A/N:** Things are coming to a head, you see. These next few chapters have been as fun as they were challenging. Hopefully to get all of the fun and none of the challenge from them.

Chapter 34 is up next Friday. Until then!


	34. Wild, Wild West

Chapter 34, Wild, Wild West

 **A/N:** Welcome back! This is the first...basically ordinary chapter since the hiatus. In that it's the usual four scenes. You might begin to spot a common thread as you go through this one. These stories are, very much, all connected.

* * *

Everything was distorted. Sound, sight, sensation. In the moments immediately following the shot, there were confused, frightened exclamations.

Celeste had been one of the first to look up, see Commissioner Ratcliff fall to the floor. In the next second, the rumbling of a paralyzed crowd increased to all out chaos, confusion.

"He's been shot!" someone cried out, "Call an ambulance!" another, "Where'd that bike go?"

Another shot rang out, a bullet pinging off the fence. Celeste let out a cry, pressing her hands to her ears.

"Look out!" Goofy cried beside her, pointing to a nearby roof where she could just glimpse somebody hunkering down on a rooftop across the road.

In the next moment, more shots were fired into the crowd. Screams, panics, pandemonium.

"C'mon!" Goofy started off, dragging her to her feet.

"What?" Celeste breathed, "Where are we going?"

But he was already running down the block, moving around behind the building. Celeste got a glimpse of the DPD steps, Ratcliff slumped down on the ground, Hades still bent down behind the podium, D.A Hartford, sleeves rolled up past her elbows, face bright crimson, crying out, "Find that gunman, you ingrates! Do I have to tell you _everything_? I swear to Christ, heads are gonna _roll_!"

"Goofy..." Celeste began, "What are you...?"

Goofy drew up alongside a sleek black Buick sedan, indisputably a government car.

"You hold tight to whatever it is you wanna say, ma'am," he unlocked the car, holding open the door, "And sit here."

"In the _car_?"

"Safest place. I've gotta find my partner..."

"Agent, maybe I should just give you the..."

But he'd already all but shoved Celeste into the backseat of the car, closing the door behind her. Celeste came to rest roughly against the admittedly comfortable leather seat, watching Goofy hurry across the asphalt.

"Oh for the love of..." she tried to open the door, and found it locked, "So much for the FBI..."

She looked around the car, taking in the pungent odor of cigarette smoke. There was an ashtray between the driver's and passenger's seats. Celeste counted 24 cigarette butts.

A cup holder in the passenger side door sported a mug that proclaimed, ' _DARN GOOD DAD_ ' in block letters. On the dashboard was a bobble head in the likeness of a duck, nodding up and down. Celeste got the sickly feeling it was leering at her, and tore her eyes away from it.

She could hear the muted noise of the madness in the street, the keening of sirens. No more shots. Celeste pressed her hand against the window, setting the hospital log in sheets on the seat behind her.

Funny how, just a few minutes ago, they'd seemed like the key to clinching this whole thing.

Before too long, she saw Goofy dashing back across the lot to the car, closely pursued by a fuming Agent Duckworth. Even from inside the car, she could make out Donald's raging exclamations as they got closer.

"Where the _shit_ have you been?"

"I was listening to the speech!"

"There's a goddamnsniper shooting at civilians!"

"Well, he wasn't doing it the whole time..."

Donald let out a cry somewhere between a screech and a roar, moving to unlock the car, sliding into the driver's seat.

"That biker's zippadeedoodahing out of here, and I'm not about to give him the pleasure," he turned the key on the ignition as Goofy slid into the passenger seat.

"We're going after him?"

"Well, I'm not saying here while Mary Queen of Scotch gives herself a coronary."

"Now, Donald, we don't know if she drinks, she's just having a real bad..."

Donald let out another of his cries, putting his foot to the accelerator. Before Celeste could do a thing, she'd lurched forward as the car went tearing out of the parking lot and onto the still chaotic road.

"Outta the way, outta the way!" Donald cried, waving one arm around as terrified civilians, being ordered to disperse by harried and distressed policemen, went ducking every which way to avoid the car, "It's like scattering chickens!"

They continued down the road, only to be held off by an approaching ambulance.

"Look out!" Goofy cried, unnecessarily. Donald swore, wrenched the wheel around, pulling them into a tight U-turn as they headed the other way. Celeste pitched back, then forth, falling in between the driver's and passenger seats, her face nearly planting in Donald's ashtray.

"Oh God..." she gasped. Donald screamed, "What the hell is _she_ doing here?"

"He locked me in the car!"

"She had things to show us," explained Goofy, "I didn't think we'd be going right after the..."

"I can't chase an assassin with a terrified civilian in the car!"

"She's not terrified. Are ya terrified, Chest?"

Celeste stared at him, gaping, unable to form a sentence. Not that it would make a difference as Donald cried out, "I've got no time for this, he's getting away!" and floored the accelerator again.

"He's on a motorcycle!" Celeste breathed, "He must have at least five minutes head start..."

"Oh, look, a backseat driver. Lady, I left my wife at home..."

Celeste prepared to say something in indignation, but Donald had already made a sharp turn from Allwine to Anselmo.

"Might wanna put on your seat belt," said Goofy in what he clearly thought was a helpful tone of voice.

Celeste allowed herself to get over the shock of the situation and rationalized she might as well strap herself down before Donald drove them into a lamppost. Or, at this speed, several lampposts in quick succession and maybe a storefront while they were at it.

She climbed back onto the backseat, reaching along the leather, "There's...there's no seat belt."

"Of course, not," said Donald, "This is a Buick."

" _What_?"

"There! There!" Goofy, pointing frantically like a kid, "I see him!"

He was right. Up ahead, down Anselmo Avenue, a motorcycle powering on, a black-clad driver hunkered down over the handlebars.

"We've got the rat," Donald growled, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, "Hold onto your privates."

They jolted down the street, Celeste's heart going into her mouth as she gripped with all her might onto the edge of her seat. The motorcycle only seemed to accelerate harder, veering into the next lane, causing a minivan to careen dangerously toward the curb, horn honking alarmingly.

"So he wants to play it like _that_ , huh?" And Donald headed into the same lane, nearly plowing into the minivan himself.

He locked eyes with the terrified looking woman behind the wheel, "What the hell are you doing in the street? Ain't you heard there's a crisis on?"

"Donald, don't start a panic..." began Goofy.

"I'm protecting the peace!"

"What you're _doing_ is going the wrong way!" Celeste snapped, "We're in the wrong lane!"

"Well, I'm _sorry_ the goddamn _assassin_ isn't obeying the rules of the road! Criminals do that, you know."

"You're gonna get people _killed_!"

"Now, Ceebest, I know it don't seem that way, now, but Donald's actually pretty good behind the wheel. Back in the day, he used to be a crab racer."

" _Drag_ racer! And damn good at it."

The newspaper stand they swerved to avoid either stood in testament to the fact, or in glaring defiance of it. Celeste's stomach was roiling too much for her to be sure.

The bike was slowing down somewhat, preparing to turn. Celeste caught a glimpse of the approaching street sign, then Donald preparing to follow.

"No!" she cried to stop him.

"The hell do you _mean_ , no? I'll put my blinkers on, if it makes you feel better."

"He's going down Macneille, that's a one way street and it's _narrow_."

"Gee, thanks, if I wanted traffic tips, I'd have dialed 511."

Celeste slammed her hand on the back of the driver's seat in frustration, "He's on a bike, he'll be able to maneuver any way he wants, but if he makes a sharp turn off Macneille, you won't have the space to follow him."

Donald eyed her warily. At last, he grumbled, "And what would you have me do, Supermom?"

Celeste brushed her hair from her eyes, calling to mind a thousand detours, school trips, football games, every minute detail she could grunge up of this town's layout...

"Two blocks down, make a hard right on Carroll, follow it to Kit. There's an overpass."

Donald considered, "If you lose my perp..."

"I want him as much as you do. Maybe more."

"Ah, women..." and he moved past the turn off at Macneille. Then, again, past Farmer...

And sharply onto Carroll, past restaurants and cafes. Celeste looked around, sighing, "That's Sora's favorite deli. That's how I know the shortcut."

"Ain't that something? Yanno, I could do with a sandwich..."

The overpass loomed up ahead of them. Celeste kept an eye on the stretch of road above them, seeing the curve where it looped back.

"We should be able to just..."

The bike came tearing down the overpass. Donald pumped his fist in the air, "Lady, I can't remember your name, but when this is over, I'm buying you a beer."

He moved to block the ramp leading down off the overpass, clearly intending to blockade the bike, confuse the biker, give them time to pigeonhole him...

There was a screech, a crash, Goofy pointed, "Look!"

The biker must have seen their trap, turned sharply, _leaping_ the boundary of the overpass and coming down, neatly, on both wheels on the road _past_ the ramp.

"Mangy son of a nut!" Donald swore, immediately putting the Buick in reverse, turning them so sharply that Celeste's face was pressed against the window...

And facing across from the biker. That black helmet, tinted visor lowered over his face. His jacket had no insignia, none of the designs associated with the biker gangs.

Though she couldn't see his face, Celeste had the lurching feeling he was staring at her. Taking one gloved hand from the handlebars, he reached round to his back and unhooked something long and thin that had been strapped there...

A rifle.

"Oh my God!" she dropped to the floor as a bullet pinged off the glass, cracking it, but not breaking it.

"Wanna take potshots at _my_ crate, Oswald?" Donald exclaimed, "I'll show him. Goofy, get the Mag..."

"Donald, _you_ have the Magnum, _I_ have the Webley."

"You have the Magnum..."

"Well, I did until you borrowed it, and I'm sure I haven't seen it since. Actually, I've never even seen you use the thing. Makes me wonder why you wanted it to begin with..."

Another shot. Celeste pressed her hands over her ears, " _We are going to die_!"

"Fine, take the gun!" Donald reached into his pocket, pulled the sidearm and tossed it to Goofy.

"You _do_ have it!"

"Shut up and shoot the bastard!"

Goofy nodded, proceeding to undo his seat belt and stumble into the back seat, nearly tripping into Celeste.

"What are you doing?"

"More room! You might wanna hunker down back there..."

"Back...back where?"

But he'd already opened the freshly unlocked driver's side door, letting in a whistling, damp wind from the overpass, and giving Celeste an excellent view of the biker maniac that was trying to kill them.

She screamed, pressing up against the passenger door, watching as Goofy leaned out, trained his gun on the bike, fired a shot, then another.

"You idiot, aim at the tires!" Donald ordered.

"I _am_! Look!"

"Don't look," Celeste told him, "You're driving the car!"

"I know what I'm doing!"

"Watch it!" Celeste cried out, seeing the biker training his rifle on them again, just as Goofy was lining up a shot...

A pop, the biker lagged back, not hit, but startled. Goofy let out a whoop, ducking back inside, "That's patience, you see. Gotta have it in this..."

"He's coming up behind!" Donald, raving at the rearview mirror.

They all turned around to glimpse, through the rear windshield, the biker picking up speed, making to ram them in the bumper...

"Donald..." Goofy began.

"Close your trap."

"But Donald..."

" _I said shut it_!" and Donald put on the brakes just as the bike careened into them. Celeste grabbed onto the driver's side door, pulling it shut and pushing Goofy back.

He fell back over her, the smoking pistol sliding out of his hand and onto the felt of the floor. She lowered her head into her hands, realizing she was shaking with adrenaline.

"Oh God...oh Jesus..." she pressed her hand to her heart, feeling it beating a mile a minute.

"That was some quick thinking, Donald!" Goofy gave Donald the thumb's up.

"Yeah, yeah, hold the roses," but Donald looked particularly pleased with himself all the same, undoing his seat belt and moving for the door, "Let's get this son of a..."

"Wait," Celeste interrupted, "Wait...look."

Goofy joined her in peeking over the back of the seat to look out the rear windshield. Nothing. Just empty road.

"Well, where in the heck did he..."

A screech of tires on asphalt, a shadow moving like a blur past the glass...a deafening thud on the roof above them...

The bike came down on the bumper, its rear wheel bouncing as if on rubber, before hitting the road, and continuing off on its way.

Celeste couldn't keep from staring, eyes wide, mouth agape. Even Goofy next to her looked dumbstruck.

But Donald only let out another of his by now signature cries, "You wanna play hard to get, you punk? You messed with the wrong suit!"

"Wait, Donald..."

But he'd already floored the accelerator, pushing them forward in pursuit, neither of his passengers getting any word in edgewise.

* * *

The farther north they drove, the tenser Squall became. It was odd, having some direction, and yet at the same time feeling completely directionless.

Seifer was one thing...not knowing where he was, what he'd done to cause both their hearts to cry out as they had. But, sitting alongside Tifa in this patrol car, watching her smile with her usual smooth demeanor as, gradually, the sparse woods they were driving through became pine groves, granite slabs, stretches of low grass slicked with frost...

He felt lost. Powerless, in a way he hadn't felt in a long time, but that recent circumstances seemed to indicate he should be getting used to.

"How much farther?" Tifa asked at one point. Squall looked at her, that tiny smile on her lips, like she was trying to calm him down in a way he was _absolutely certain_ was meant to be just as condescending as it looked and probably more.

"It's in the mountains so...pretty far."

"What do you think we're gonna find?"

"A bunch of angry bikers, probably."

Tifa rolled her eyes, "Fine. Stay antisocial."

Squall looked at her, "I'm sorry, did you _miss_ my conversation?"

Tifa shrugged, "I'm just trying to get a read on you."

"I thought you already had one."

"Yeah, but sometimes I'm too hard on people for my own good. Maybe I want to give you the benefit of the doubt."

"How generous of you."

"Fine. Don't say I didn't try."

They passed on in quiet for a while, maybe a mile or two. There were precious few road signs north of Departure. Who would need them anyway? This whole upper stretch of the county was mostly howling wilderness.

He sighed, "Look..."

"Oh?" she cocked an eyebrow. Squall gritted his teeth, "I'm not trying to be this way."

"Oh, so you're just naturally an asshole? The legends are true."

Squall glared at her, "I've got a lot on my plate. Don't you?"

"Sure. But I don't clam up whenever someone tries being _nice_ to me. Neither does Yuffie, and she's about as busy as us on our worst day."

"Yeah, well...everyone handles this job differently."

" _That's_ your excuse?"

"It's not an excuse."

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, "I get it. Okay? This job is a lot of baggage. It's a lot to deal with, and a lot of the time, we're on our own. It's lonely. Frankly, it's _depressing_."

"We didn't sign up for a fun fair, Lockhart."

"Lockhart? God, loosen up. Call me Tifa. Hell, call me 'you bitch' if you want to be honest..."

"I don't think you're a bitch," Squall was surprised at the hardness of his tone, "Even if I _did_ think you were scum of the earth, I wouldn't call you a bitch."

"Aw...Squally, Respecter of Women."

"Do I come off as _dis_ respectful?"

"You honestly don't know the answer to that?" Tifa chuckled lightly, "Listen, to be honest, I don't care if you respect me or not."

" _I_ care if I seem disrespectful..."

"You _care_ about things?" she shrugged, "What am I saying? Of course you do. You care so much about your weird, intangible sense of how this world works that you have actively shut down every human impulse you have. Some people would call that counterproductive."

"You can't get away with feeling a lot in this job. _Tifa_. You say you know me, so you know why."

There was a lengthy silence. A deer looked up to regard them as they drove past. Finally, Tifa said, "I never knew your partner."

"My _superior_. I was her rookie."

"From all I heard about her, she was a good cop. A good person."

"She was. Too good a person."

"I know...there were rumors. After she died. That you and her..."

"You really want to shoot the breeze over old gossip? _Now_?"

"I'm just saying, looking at it a certain way, some things start to make sense. That...maybe if you _did_ end up feeling something for Detective Heartilly, you'd end up feeling bad that you did, because of how that all ended. So that, after, you'd try to feel as little as possible. For the job."

Squall looked at her, "You a shrink too?"

"I was a bartender for a coupla years."

"No kidding."

She smirked, "Police Academy didn't pay for itself. And you learn a hell of a lot."

"About mixing drinks?"

"About _people_. About life," she shrugs, "I like people. Sure, this job does a lot to dilute my enthusiasm for most of them, but...I can't help myself. Most people are good. Or they want to be."

Squall studied her in a new way. He couldn't help but imagine himself leaning over a bar, some old song playing over the juke. This busty brunette barmaid polishing a glass in front of him.

He couldn't remember his last bar. His last drink. He could barely remember a last song.

"So...let's say I was at your bar."

She rolled her eyes.

"A captive audience. And you got your read on me. Whatever. You'd say I have no feelings."

Tifa considered for a while, "No. No, because somebody who has no feelings wouldn't _care_ so much about not having them. You _do_ have feelings. You just...turn them off."

"Which, of course, is a very unhealthy thing to do."

She shrugged, "You said it, not me."

Squall drummed his fingers against the dashboard, "I don't _know_ what I'm feeling, half the time."

"That's probably true. You ignore them long enough, I bet they all start feeling the same. And maybe that feeling's not a nice one."

"You're very interested in my feelings," Squall turned to her, "Is this just...bullshitting on the road, or..."

"Why not?" but there was a stiffness to the way she said it. Squall sighed, "Of course not. So who asked you for the profile? Harvey? Ratcliff? Don't say you and Yuffie had a bet."

She scowled, "Please. I'm not that smarmy."

"Maybe, maybe not, but you've got an ulterior motive for being so interested in what goes on in my head."

She was quiet for a while, and Squall began to think she just wasn't going to say anything at all, just to spite him. At last, though, she sighed, "Open the glovebox."

"Stink pellets or a flash grenade?"

"Don't be a smartass."

He shrugged and, with only a slight hesitation, reached forward and opened the glove compartment. At once, a plastic orange cylinder rolled forward. Squall caught it just before it hit the floor.

"Sertraline..." he read the label, "These are antidepressants."

"Antidepressants they are."

"You..." but he turned the bottle over in his hand, his eyebrows widening, "These are Saix's." He looked up and saw that Tifa was watching him.

"How do you have these?" he asked, surprised at the tightness of his own voice.

"They were at the gas station. My assumption is he dropped them mid-hold up."

"They were left at the crime scene, that makes them evidence."

"Right on."

"You didn't clear this with Harvey, did you?"

Tifa cocked an eyebrow, "I did not. Guess that makes me about as dirty as you."

"Dirty?"

"Oh, cut the bull, Squall," she looked at him, "We've established, this isn't exactly my first rodeo. And I can read people. Even people who keep their pages mostly blank. You're hiding something."

Squall gritted his teeth, "You think I knew about the pills? Saix had to get a psych eval when he joined up, same as the rest of us. They don't disclose that stuff, this is the first I've heard of it."

Tifa didn't hesitate a beat before saying, "Oh, I believe it."

"You do?"

"You look too surprised to be lying."

Squall turned the bottle over in his hand, "Anyway, what does it matter? Saix has depression. Fine."

" _Fine_?"

"You know what I mean. It doesn't have anything to do with the..."

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

"You think Saix...what...went into some manic spiral?"

"The term would be _episode_. I'm saying, it would explain a lot."

"Which is why you didn't report that you found it?"

Tifa bit her lip. It was a while before she spoke again, "Wouldn't have done any good."

"How do you figure?"

"Because your boys at DPD already have it on file. You said it yourself. And because this isn't just the kinda thing you write up without good reason."

"What do you mean?"

Tifa looked at him, "This isn't a bottle of Advil, Squall. It gets out your boy..."

"He's not my _boy_..."

"He's more like you than you're willing to admit."

Squall sat back, bristling quietly as Tifa continued, "If it gets out he was on pills, his fate's already sealed. Nothing else we find, _whatever_ else we find, it gets second billing. Because now he isn't just some cop who kidnapped his partner and stuck up a gas station...now he's _crazy_."

"Crazy is a bit of..."

"You think I don't know?" she said, and the hardness of her voice surprised him, "But it doesn't matter. Not to them."

"So you...holding onto these, risking your career for some guy you barely know...this is you giving him the benefit of the doubt?"

"It's me doing damage control. Whatever he's doing, whyever he's doing it...he deserves a chance to explain himself before we get the mob on him."

"Explain himself?"

"Yeah. You know? Justice. Remember that?"

And Squall sighed, at the same time unable to feel a tiny twinge deep down inside as he looked back out to the road ahead of them, the mountains rising in the near distance, "Vaguely."

* * *

Selphie had heard of being immobilized by shock. How, sometimes, seeing something suitably terrifying would petrify you, freeze you in place.

Clearly, evolution had skipped that beat with her.

No sooner had she heard the shot ring out, she'd fallen against the wall, hands over her ears, whipping her head one way and then the other, trying to find a source for the shooter.

Everybody else in the station either did the same, or else they actually _did_ freeze in place, Zack being the case in point. He looked at her, eyes wide. She looked back, wondering if, maybe, she'd just freaked out, imagined something...

But they'd all heard it too. The dispatcher got to his feet, moving around the desk, toward the doors, the press conference outside...

Then another shot, another, quick bangs firing off in quick succession. Screams erupted from outside. Selphie felt her blood run cold.

"There's a sniper!" cried one of the officers, going for his own sidearm as he moved toward the foyer, "Christ, they got the Commissioner!"

The whole station might as well have exploded. Those few that had stayed inside during the media circus went running around, most hurrying outside as if to join in the madness.

"Zack?" Selphie turned to him, " _Zack_?" she shook him by the shoulders and he blinked, as if forced awake.

"Come on, we've gotta go!"

"Go _where_?" he asked breathlessly.

Selphie had no real answer to that. She opened her mouth, trying to think of something on the spot.

Outside, the D.A. was shouting, her voice ringing into the station as clearly as if she were standing right there, "Find that gunman, you ingrates! Do I have to tell you _everything_? I swear to Christ, heads are gonna _roll_!"

The dispatcher returned from the foyer, face gray. He leaned on the desk, "All nonessential personnel, stay put. Station's on lockdown."

" _What_?" Selphie demanded, "But the shooter's right out..."

"Mom!"

Selphie turned at his cry, and saw Lucrecia running across the dispatch, pale and wild haired. She put a hand on Zack's shoulder, "Oh, thank God, you're still inside."

"Mom, what is going on?"

Her lips twitched, Selphie realized she had as good a guess as they did, "It's not safe here."

"I noticed," remarked Selphie, but Lucretia seemed to ignore her, which was probably for the best.

"You kids get away from here, as fast as you can."

"But they said the station was..."

"I don't care what they said!" she snapped in the hardest voice Selphie had heard her use, which still wasn't all that hard, "Please, Zack."

So Zack nodded, however hesitantly, "But...what about you?"

"People are hurt, and the ambulances will be a while coming. I have to do my part. You guys get somewhere safe and you _stay_ there."

Selphie interjected, "Where is _safe_? Because the old 'hospital and cop station' answers aren't looking very reliable."

"Home?" suggested Zack, but Lucrecia wasted no time, " _No._ Not home. You avoid the apartment. And Amphitrite's house too. There's no telling what might..."

" _What_ might?" Selphie tried, but Lucrecia wouldn't say, instead enveloping her son in a hug, "You find a place, and you stay there. I love you."

And she was gone, into the crowd. Selphie might've remarked on this furtherance of her simply stellar parenting, but at this point Irvine came staggering out of a door at the other end of the room, hat askew.

"Where _were_ you?" Selphie asked.

"I'm a simple man, Selph. I hear gunshots, I take cover."

"In the _bathroom_?"

Irvine nodded, "There's a window in there, janky latch. We can get out that way," he must have noticed their expressions, because he added, "I was B.S'ing with one of the cops before. That's how your dude Almasy got out."

"Oh, well if it worked for _him_..." muttered Zack with a touch of irony.

"Fine, it's better than nothing," Selphie decided, "But we can't just go."

"Oh, this'll be _great_..." began Irvine, but Selphie just shot him a glare and hurried into another side room.

This time, Namine _did_ look up as they entered. She hadn't gotten up from the corner where she'd hunkered down, her whole body now shaking like a leaf. When she saw them enter, she moved further back, practically flush against the wall.

"Oh shit," said Irvine.

"Namine?" Selphie tried on the name, taking an uncertain step forward, "Namine, honey, it's me, Selphie? Remember? You clocked me for lying?"

"Do we really have time for..."

"Dude!" Zack shut Irvine up effectively enough.

"I know you're pretty scared. Guess what? I'm scared too," Selphie felt her words shaking on her lips, "But...uh...I have this friend, and she always says that the best thing to do when you're scared is find something to do. Because..." she pressed her eyes closed, trying to recall the words to mind, "...because fear shuts you down. Makes you not want to do...anything. So, just by taking action...you're kicking fear's ass."

She felt a tear on her cheek, "I promise, we'll keep you safe."

And, very slowly, Namine reached forward and took Selphie's hand. Selphie let out a tiny, happy sob as she got to her feet, wrapping her arms around this girl who'd been her very best friend in a hug.

"Whoa," said Zack, "That was pretty..."

"It was something," Selphie turned to Irvine, "That window."

"Oh. Oh, yeah..." Irvine looked from Namine to Selphie, "Yeah, sure. Come on, we'd better bust ass."

He hurried out of the room, Zack close behind him. Selphie rolled her eyes, turning back to Namine, "Don't mind him. He's an idiot."

Namine's expression didn't register anything for this either way, but she still followed Selphie back out into the now nearly deserted, and entirely darkened (what turning off what limited lights they had in the first place was supposed to accomplish, Selphie had no idea) dispatch, to the bathroom at the far end.

Irvine and Zack were propping open the grimy window, which seemed to drop right down into the parking lot. Irvine waved his hat as if to beckon them over, "Ladies first."

"Classy," Selphie moved forward, but Zack said, "Wait," and, in the next second, vaulted through and out with no trouble, landing neatly on his feet.

"Take my hand," he offered to up to her.

Irvine rolled his eyes as Selphie smiled in approval, taking Zack's hand and alighting from the window, at once offering a hand to Namine who, again, took it with some hesitation, following her out.

"Nobody gonna give Irvine a hand?" he asked, "Fine, I see how it is," and he joined them, letting the window swing shut behind.

They could hear screams from the street, approaching sirens that must be ambulances. Namine let out a tiny whimper at the noise, wrapping her arms around herself. Selphie realized she only had on the hospital gown and, sighing, took of her jacket and wrapped it around Namine, who looked at her in surprise, but gave a tiny nod, as if approximating thanks.

"Do we have _any_ idea where we're going?" asked Irvine.

"What, you're going with us?" Zack asked.

"You're not quitting me that easy. 'Sides, you're gonna need my help."

"This'll be rich," said Selphie.

"You didn't hear? Guy that shot Ratcliff was a biker."

Zack's eyed widened and even Selphie couldn't disguise her surprise, "Oh crap."

"This case got a whole lot bigger," Irvine shrugged, "So...where next?"

"My Mom said..."

"Dude, really?"

"Don't be a dick," Selphie rolled her eyes, "Come on, I have an idea."

"That's more like it."

Not letting go of Namine's hand, Selphie hurried around the back of the station, the boys on her heels. Giving the madness still raging out in front of the building only the most sparing of looks, Selphie started down Anselmo Avenue.

"Please don't say we're taking the train," Zack panted at one point.

"What? No? Would the trains even be _running_?"

"Fine," allowed Irvine, "So where _are_ we going?"

"Cancer."

Selphie stopped short in the middle of the street, turning to look at Namine, "W...what?"

She stopped, looking at Selphie with eyes that could probably see way deep into her soul, "Cancer."

Same voice. Kairi's voice. Just tiny, but not at all unsure. Selphie felt goosebumps up and down her arms.

"So, is she describing herself," said Irvine, "Or..."

"There's a cancer killing her family," Selphie said tentatively, barely able to believe this herself, "Right?"

Namine nodded, just once and so slightly it was barely visible.

"Selphie," said Zack uneasily, "What exactly is..."

"It's what she said to me," said Selphie, "That night."

"Who, Namine?"

"Tidus's Mom. When I went up to the door to get him. She got all weepy and weird and then she said that there was a cancer killing her family, and I'm spreading it."

"Nice lady. So I guess Tidus takes after her?"

They both glared at Irvine, Selphie saying, "She's...she's the one I want to see."

"My Mom said go to a safe place..." began Zack.

Irvine finished for him, "The lady that called you cancer doesn't sound that safe to me. Like, on a _social_ level, at least..."

"She was at the police station," said Selphie, "At the dispatch. I...I got so distracted by that wanted poster, I forgot to tell you. I...I think she was reporting Tidus missing. Or...or she was going to, but then she just got fed up and left."

"Nice lady."

Zack cut in, "But, wait a second, why would she just _leave_?"

"That's what I want to find out. Maybe she knows something, something that gave her last minute cold feet."

Irvine looked like he wanted to say something to that, but Zack just nodded, "Okay. Okay, it sounds like a lead. Let's do it."

Selphie nodded, gratified, continuing down the block, the others behind her.

"So..." Irvine addressed Namine, "Know any other words?"

"Irvine," Selphie told him shortly.

"Salmonella, measles, syphilis..."

"Irvine, shut up."

"You don't think it's just a _little_ bit weird that she _magically_ knows what Tidus's Mom said to you?"

"Of course it's weird, Irvine, everything about her is weird..." she turned to Namine, "No offense."

Namine showed no sign of having even heard them. Selphie realized she was still barefoot, trekking along the sidewalk with them, like some escaped mental patient.

Which, after all, maybe she sort of was.

Once or twice they heard sirens keening a few blocks over. Whenever this happened, Namine would get all tense again, slowing down or stopping completely.

"I don't think they're looking for us, girl," Irvine told her at one point.

"I don't think she's afraid of that," said Zack, "I think it's just...the noise?"

"Loud noises?"

"Or just...you know. Sirens?"

It was true that, whenever the sounds faded away, Namine would get right back to moving, and a tiny bit of warmth would return to her, felt against Selphie's hand. But whether or not this indicated anything significant, Selphie couldn't say.

They reached Tidus's house about 15 minutes after clearing off from the DPD. The place looked much as it had that night. Perfectly ordinary suburban idyll.

Selphie got the willies going up the walkway.

"Two cars in the driveway," pointed out Irvine.

"One of them's Tidus's," Selphie and Zack said at once. He reddened, clearing his throat, "He...he...um...he drives it to school."

"We go to the same school, Zack," said Selphie flatly, "The other car could be his Mom's, though."

"What about his Dad?" asked Irvine.

Zack shrugged, looking to Selphie, who sighed, "I...I guess. I don't know much about Tidus's..."

That night. Tidus arguing, storming down the stairs, joining them without a second thought. The limp...

"Let's do it," she said at last, lifting her fist and rapping on the door.

Nothing at first. Selphie found herself nervously toying with her hair. Zack was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, while Irvine leaned against the patio railing, flicking flakes of paint from the cracked wood to watch them soar into the (out of season, of course) hydrangeas that dotted the front yard.

Namine, for her part, seemed somewhat more relaxed. Half leaning, half sitting on the railing, she looked out at the quiet neighborhood street, arms crossed before her, hair hanging neatly over one shoulder.

"Maybe she's dead," said Irvine.

" _What?_ " asked Zack, "No. How? _What_?"

"Well, I don't know if you guys noticed, but we kinda just escaped a terrorist attack."

"She left before that," pointed out Selphie, "She couldn't have been in the crowd."

"How do you know? She might've stayed to watch the bullshit fest."

"She didn't seem to be in the mood for bullshit."

"You're right."

Selphie let out a short scream, whirling around on her heel to look at the woman in the newly opened doorway.

"I'm not."

"Oh...hi," she smiled feebly, raising her hand in a wave, "You know me, I'm Selphie. That's Zack, and this is Irvine, and this is..."

"Get out," she made to slam the door, just as she had the first night. Selphie dove in to stop the door jam, but wasn't as fast as she'd been last time.

"Oh, come on! Please! We're on your side..."

"This feels kinda icky," says Zack, "I mean...it's _her_ son."

"And we're the ones trying to rescue him, ain't we?" Irvine shrugged, "Stand back, I've got this."

"What're you going to do?" asked Selphie, suddenly anxious. Irvine winked at her, reaching into his coat and pulling out a smooth, yet well worn slingshot.

"Aw, c'mon, man..." began Zack.

"Cool your loins, milady," Irvine told him, picking up a smooth pebble from the flowerbed beneath the patio, putting it into the sling and pulling back, saying, in a considerably louder voice, "That sure is a very nice window the right of the door..."

"You're aiming for the left," said Selphie.

"...to the _left_ of the door. It would be a real shame..."

The door opened, "Put that damn thing down. I swear to Christ I will call the..." but she stopped herself, as if remembering.

"Yep," Irvine shrugged, "These are lawless lands now. Welcome to the Wild, Wild West."

"Ignore him," Selphie told her, "Listen..." she trailed off, realizing she didn't even know this woman's name, "We're...we're not trying to make any trouble for you."

"You mean any _more_ trouble?"

Selphie sighed, "We're worried about Tidus. And...we think we have an idea what happened to him."

She flinched, "You...you can't possibly..." she sounded terrified.

"Why don't you invite us in, we'll tell you all about it?" Irvine asked cheekily.

Selphie was sure every parent she knew (except her Dad, he'd probably just sigh and mutter a cuss) would flip the hell out at being addressed that way by a teenager, never mind one with a slingshot and a goddamn cowboy hat, but Tidus's Mom just closed her eyes and, letting out a long breath, holding her door the rest of the way open and letting them pass inside.

The living room was neat, well-appointed. Nothing fancy, but Selphie could never remember it being particularly fancy one way or another. She remembered a floor strewn wide with toys, little army men positioned on the coffee table, the arms of the sofa, of that big recliner... Sora and Tidus had waged at least three major wars in this room.

She was pretty sure Tidus always won, but that's only because he kept inventing war crimes which, according to whatever Geneva Convention this fantasy world operated on, kept on getting Sora sent to the Hague or equivalent.

"Don't expect Hawaiian Punch," Tidus's mother drawled, closing the door firmly behind them.

"Well, that's a nice way to talk to your missing son's friends..."

She looked at him, "Aren't you the one who sells doobies behind the school?"

"Aw, you remember the principal's warning."

'Weren't you suspended for that?" asked Zack.

"Yeah, but Skelly and I have an understanding. He's cool."

"Yeah, let's not," Selphie turned back to their reluctant hostess, "Ma'am, we think we know what happened to Tidus."

"You already said that," she said miserably, reaching for a glass on the coffee table. Selphie frowned, "Is that a vodka tonic?"

"Am I about to be lectured on sobriety by the girl who seduced my son?"

Irvine guffawed audibly. Forcing herself not to clock this self-righteous bitch in the teeth, Selphie smiled pleasantly and said, "Well, if we're being honest, those were Moscow Mules, and they cost a pretty penny..."

She stared, eyes wide. Selphie realized this tack wasn't exactly working, and hastily changed courses.

"The _point_ is..."

"You don't know what happened to my son," she said in a dour, heavy voice, "You can't possibly know."

A silence. Irvine rolled his eyes, "Well, actually, if you were following along, you'd know we _do_ know, because we _saw_..."

"We never told her we saw anything," said Zack.

"Yeah, we did."

"No, we didn't..."

She blinked, "You were there? You...you saw them take..."

"Yeah," said Selphie, "Yeah, we did."

She let out a shaky sigh, "Oh my God..."

"Wait," Selphie realized, "Wait, I...I never said anybody took Tidus. How did you..."

"Get out," she fixed her with those piercing eyes, "Get _out_. For your own good. Leave, go home, forget about this..."

"You _do_ know something," Selphie breathed, a sickly feeling overtaking her, "What is it? Who's taken Tidus, where are they keeping him, why the hell won't you _do_ any..."

She screamed at her, hurling her glass across the room. Selphie ducked at once, and Irvine jumped wild to let the glass shatter uselessly against the wall.

"You don't understand. You can't possibly understand. You're a pampered little twit who treats relationships like _trinkets_ , little things for you to collect and show off and...and lord over everybody else. You can't possibly understand the _pain_ , the _entrapment_ , the loss that comes with all of this... They don't tell you about it when you're a girl, of course. Then who would ever _want_ to get married, have a family? It's a con. And the most disgusting, evil, _twisted_ part of it all is...once all is said and done, once you've given your life away... you end up _loving_ the mess you've made anyway."

Zack looked at Selphie, wide-eyed. She shrugged, at a loss. She wasn't sure if she should play along with this whole thing or just force her to get to the point.

"Of...of course you love your son. You're his mom," she said at last.

"Don't give me that bull," she lifted the glass to her lips, taking a hearty swig and pressing her eyes shut, "Mothers don't have to love their children, just like wives don't have to love their husbands..."

"Husbands?"

They all turned sharply to look at Namine. Selphie had almost forgotten she was there, sitting neatly in the recliner, legs crossed over each other, hands clasped in her lap. She was looking at Tidus's mother with a keen interest.

"You..." she began, "You're that girl..."

"She happens to have a name," said Selphie, "She actually has two, depending who you ask."

Namine just kept on looking at Tidus's mother, no true expression in her face, just a weird, muted fascination.

"Husband?" she tried again.

"I think she's trying to ask about your husband," said Irvine helpfully.

Her mouth curdled into a scowl, "What do you know about my husband?"

"Nothing," said Zack, "Honest, we know...nothing."

"Well, _she_ might," said Irvine, "You might've noticed, she's kinda special."

Selphie prepared to shut him up again, but his words had had an effect on Tidus's mother. She ran both hands down the length of her face, letting out a tremulous, shaky breath.

"There is _nothing_ crueler in this world," she said at last, "Than falling in love with a prince, and watching him grow into a monster."

Selphie lifted one hand to her mouth, looking at Zack, who appeared just as uncomfortable. Namine was still looking at Tidus's mother, as if pinning her in place.

"Well...there _is_ one worse thing. Watching the...the _child_ you made with that prince, watch him grow. Golden and strong and... _pure_...and still, sometimes, seeing a flicker of the same darkness, the same monster."

There was a heavy silence. Tidus's mother lowered herself onto the sofa, shoulders slumped. She suddenly seemed years older, faded, tired.

Selphie heard her own voice as if from miles away, "Is that why he hits Tidus?"

She looked up sharply, "I tried to stop him. Early on. Not enough. It's my weakness, you see. Because, even...even when he _is_ a wretched, twisted beast, I can't help but think..."

"Think there's still a prince deep inside somewhere," said Zack, hushed.

"I've been a fool," she said miserably, "I chose to ignore what was happening right in front of my eyes, and now I'm paying for it. It's the least I deserve..."

"Then help us!" blurted Selphie, "Help us find Tidus, tell us what you know. If you feel bad..."

"There's nothing to be done," she said hollowly, "And there's nothing _you_ can do about it."

"You're so sure?" asked Selphie bitterly, "What, you make it sound like..."

She felt something flutter inside her as she said it, "You...you _don't_ mean Tidus is..."

"No!" not defiant, not angry, just despairing, _sad_ as if she were trying to convince herself, "No, he's not. He...he _can't_ be. But there is nothing we can do, and if _you_ get yourselves involved in this, then on your own heads..."

She grew quiet, still, silent, so suddenly that Selphie gasped. As first she didn't understand but, looking around, she saw the hand on her arm.

Namine had gotten to her feet, reached out, gently touched Tidus's mother there, as if to hold her steady. And, no sooner had she done that, then some weird, still trance seemed to come down on the woman.

"Um..." began Zack, uncertainly, but Tidus's mother spoke first, in unsteady, slow, yet weirdly clear words.

"I could've stopped him," her voice was heavy, weighed down with a sadness so palpable it sent goosebumps up Selphie's arms.

"All these years, I've told myself I could've. At any time. For any reason. I told myself I was strong enough to stop him."

"Your...your husband?" asked Zack, but Selphie, not even thinking about it, shushed him.

It seemed as if to interrupt would be to stop the whole thing, snap them out of whatever crazy dream this was.

"Even when I was a girl. I told myself 'he doesn't mean it'. 'He has a temper, so do you'. I thought it made him _like_ me. It wasn't until our boy, our son that _we_ made together..."

"No," said Namine, softly, placidly, as if just casually pointing something out. She had eyes only for Tidus's mother, who did not seem capable of looking back to meet her own.

"It's not your pain. Not your fault."

"A mother's job is to protect," in a ghost of a voice, "You cannot know."

"I can't," Namine, in a deep sorrow, Selphie had never before imagined her best friend's voice was capable of, "But I know pain."

Selphie felt something against her arm, a hand, clammy and shaking. She looked abruptly and saw that Zack had reached out to her. Maybe he was scared.

She took his hand in hers.

Two slow, gentle tears escaped Tidus's mother's eyes, trickled down her cheeks. She nodded, very slowly and said, resigned, "I sat back and watched as he carved this family apart. And he says he can fix it. He says he can make it right. As if he _cares_ now...as if he'll do a thing to get him back alive..."

She collapsed onto the sofa, eyes fluttering madly, what little color she had left draining from her face. Namine just stood there, hands clasped in front of her, watching the fainting woman with solemn, mildly sad eyes.

"I...I don't..." began Selphie, " _What_ did you..."

"I told you," Irvine, leaning in the kitchen doorway, "Voo. Doo."

Selphie had almost forgotten about him, "Is that...is that _cake_?"

Irvine shrugged, sticking another bite into his mouth, paper plate balanced unsteadily in one hand, "It was in the fridge. Figured she wouldn't notice," he turned to the woman, "Did we kill her?"

" _Did_ we?" asked Zack sincerely. Selphie rolled her eyes, hurrying to her side and, after a careful inspection, straightened up, "She's alive. Probably just..."

"Tired," Namine nodded, "Very tired."

"She made it sound like...like Tidus's Dad..."

Selphie finished for Zack's benefit, "Tidus was taken because of him. And now he's gonna try and get him back."

"His Dad..." Zack sighed, "Well, who the heck is he?"

"Don't look at me, I can't even remember _this_ one's name," Selphie nodded at the woman on the couch, "But if he's the same guy who gave Tidus that limp, I can't say I'm confident in his Rescue Hero cred."

"But where does that guy from the train fit into all of it?" asked Zack, "The biker, the poster you saw?"

"I don't _know_ , Zack! Surprise, surprise, my taste for intrigue lives and dies at the school limits."

"It feels like we're forgetting something," said Irvine, "You know...something _important_. Like...we have our own _witch_?"

"You shut your poo hole, Irvine, or I will..." but she trailed off.

Irvine shrugged, "Look, we all saw the same thing," another mouthful of cake, "She did some magic mojo and the lady started talking."

Selphie opened her mouth to retort, but Zack beat her to it, "It _was_ kind of weird..."

"Oh, don't tell me _you_ buy into that too?"

"Look, you're the one that keeps saying weird is the new normal..."

Selphie turned to look at Namine, uncertain, "...Namine?"

She turned only slightly.

"How do you do that? Or...or _did_ you do anything?"

"We're not gonna burn you or anything. Promise."

" _Dude_!"

There was a long, interminable silence. Finally, Namine said, "Garbage."

Selphie heaved a sigh, "Oh, look, Irvine, she's sick of you too."

"It was just a question!"

"The garbage," Namine repeated, "He threw it out."

Selphie looked at Zack, then to Irvine, then to the corner, where a tiny wastepaper basket was tucked, all but out of sight.

They ran for it, all together, nearly tipping the basket over by the time they reached it. Any apprehensions Selphie may have had about shoving her arms in someone's trash were pushed forcibly from her mind as she set to rummaging around past dust bunnies, tissue paper ("Oh Jesus Christ...") and...

"Aha!" she straightened up, "Look, look at this."

"A letter?" asked Zack, hurrying over to join her.

"A _postcard_ ," Selphie held up the crumpled, torn piece of cardboard, bringing it over to the coffee table to spread it out.

A glossy photo of some picturesque street. Tiny shopfronts with flowers in window boxes. An electric trolley going down the cobblestone lane. Old fashioned lampposts lined up to either side.

Zack pointed to the big, black lettering in the upper corner, "Main Street USA?"

"Never heard of it," Selphie flipped the thing over, "But, hey, there's an address on the back. It's up north somewhere."

"But how do we know this is the..."

Selphie turned to Namine, brow furrowed it thought, "Why don't you tell us, honey?" she handed her the postcard, "We on the right track?"

Namine accepted the postcard in one tiny hand, turning it over, one way, then the other. She gave the still, silent form of Tidus's mother another look and nodded, "They're going to kill him."

Selphie felt her blood freeze in her veins, "You mean...they _want_ to kill him, or are can you, like, see the future?"

Namine only gave her one of those sad, eternal looks of hers.

"Does it matter?" and Irvine appeared on the stairs, startling Selphie with a cry.

"Where do you keep _going_?" she demanded.

"Went poking around upstairs. Figured you guys had it covered."

Selphie noticed both his hands were folded behind his back. She rolled her eyes, "Cupcakes?"

He withdrew one hand, danging a key on a ring, "Tidus's car keys. Left them on his nightstand."

"You want to steal Tidus's car?" asked Zack, aghast.

"Well, we can't _walk_ to...whatever that place is, can we?"

"Wait, wait, hold the phone," Selphie held her hand up, "What is _we_? What are _we_ doing?"

"Aw, c'mon, Selph. You can't keep me out of this. And we both know you're going up there, don't matter what you find."

Selphie frowned, "You think you know me so well?"

Irvine shrugged, "Am I wrong? Not like you're gonna bring this to the cops. They've got enough to be useless about."

Selphie sighed, folding her arms. Irvine continued, "Look, you brought us to this place to get answers on your guy, right? Well, we did. Now let's fucking _do_ something about it."

"Well..." said Zack, "Whatever you decide, I'm there."

"Zack! What about your Mom?"

There was a flicker of hesitation on his face, "She's gonna worry no matter what happens. But if we can help Tidus, if we can bring him back, end just a little bit of all this...crazy stuff. Then I've got to do it."

"The bro code?" Selphie cocked an eyebrow, unable to keep from smirking.

Zack shrugged, "Just doing the right thing."

"So it's on?" asked Irvine, "We're bringing Witch Hazel along too, right?"

Selphie rolled her eyes, exasperated, turning to Namine and sighing. The girl didn't seem to have much of a grasp on anything that was going on, but then again, that was probably just a veneer to hide how much she _did_ know. However she'd ended up knowing it.

"Well...we can't leave her here until _this_ one wakes up. God knows what she'll do when she gets her self-awareness back."

"Foursome," grinned Irvine, "I can dig it."

"I will break a high heel off in your ass, Irvine."

"Well, if you're into it..." but he nodded at her, "Fine. Whatever. Let's go..."

"Wait," said Zack, "What's that behind your back?"

And, indeed, Selphie had forgotten Irvine was still holding something, "Look, I'm sure Tidus's room is a mess, but rest assured, I will _totally_ tell him you robbed it, Irvine, so..."

"Who said it was from _his_ room?"

At which point he produced an honest to God rifle from behind his back, aiming it right at her.

"Jesus hell!" Selphie squealed, staggering backward.

"Sweet, right?"

"That's a gun!"

"Winchester 70," Irvine beamed, "Must belong to Ti's Dad. Found it mounted in the big bedroom. Wanna have a look..." he moved toward her, prompting Selphie to take a big step back, "It has a scope!"

"I don't care if it spits fire and flies, you are _not_ bringing a gun!"

"Can you even shoot that thing?" asked Zack.

"Um, dude, did you _see_ the slingshot?" but Irvine laughed, slinging the gun over his shoulder, "It's cool. I know what I'm doing."

"What, you've shot somebody before?"

Irvine winked, which didn't do a damn thing to reassure Selphie one way or the other.

"Look..." Irvine continued, in a somewhat gentler voice, "We're going into the shit now. I think we're agreed it's the Wild West out there. Whoever's got Tidus, we're not gonna win by chatting 'em up. Sorry, Selph."

"You're implying that I'm all talk?"

"I'm implying you're good at talking. There's a difference."

Selphie rolled her eyes, "Fine. Sure. Go ahead, snippy."

"What?"

"It's a nickname," said Zack, "You know, like _sniper_..."

"But...but it's _lame._ "

"It sure is," said Selphie, smiling thinly, "Come on, we're burning daylight."

"Alright!" Irvine's attitude brightened up at once, he started for the door, reaching out a hand to Namine, before withdrawing it, as if thinking better of it, "We've got your boyfriend to save."

"Don't," said Selphie.

"Fine. We've got some idiot to save. Better?"

Selphie shook her head, but they were already crossing the room for the exit. Namine hesitated as they went, looking back to where Tidus's mother was lying on the sofa, stirring feebly, but over all asleep...peaceful, even.

Selphie sighed, "Will she be okay?"

Namine looked at her, and again Selphie felt pinned in place by her eyes. At last, she said, "It doesn't matter."

* * *

"Not much farther!" Shiki chirped from a little way ahead.

"Feels like she already said that," panted Sora, bent over, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath.

Neku just gave him one of his expressionless glares, rolled his eyes, and kept going.

Nice to know he was among friends.

"The others are gonna be _so_ stoked to see you!" Shiki told Neku, ducking neatly under an overhanging tree limb, her cat circling her legs either to guide her or in an attempt to trip her up, Sora couldn't tell.

"You think so, huh?"

"Oh, don't be like that!" she clucked, "Everybody _loves_ you."

"Well, that's their problem," said Neku as they reached a sudden steep drop in the ground ahead of them, "This the place?"

"Yep!"

Sora stumbled over, wiping sweat from his brow. Blinking vacantly, he looked down to behold what appeared to be some post-apocalyptic set piece that had been hastily thrown together for some B-movie and immediately forgotten about.

"Um...ghost town?"

"I guess," said Shiki vacantly, " _I've_ never seen anybody, at least."

Sora counted about a dozen buildings, all clustered around a wide cobblestone street, all but thrown up against the base of a mountain. Like, an actual mountain. He hadn't been paying much attention, but they must have wandered into the foothills.

"You guys live here?" he asked faintly.

"It's lonely," Shiki nodded, "But it's the best we've got."

They continued down the ridge, Shiki practically skipping over irregularities in the ground, picking up Mr. Mew at one point, presumably to make it easier for him. Neku was more cautious, moving slowly, carefully. His eyes swept over the approaching houses and shops, as if waiting for something to pop out from the lengthening shadows.

"How'd you find this place?" he asked Shiki at one point.

"Me?" she giggled, blushing, "You know me, I'd forget Mr. Mew if he wasn't so scratchy."

As if to testify to the fact, the cat swatted her face, but gently, just to prove a point.

"So...who did find it?" Sora asked, but Neku seemed already to know. His face had set in stone, his already present grimace deepening into a scowl.

"Jealous much?" asked Shiki, "C'mon, he knows what he's doing. We've been safe this whole time."

"Yep," said Neku flatly, "Safe."

They wandered down the single street. Up close, the place looked not only abandoned, but decrepit. Sora noticed broken windows, weeds and brambles growing up through cracks in the pavement. And graffiti. So much graffiti, everywhere, on nearly every surface.

He tried to read the signs as he passed them. An ice cream parlor, bakery, a bank...

"It's like a town," he commented. Neku stared at him, "You don't say?"

"No, I mean...it's weird. Tiny place being abandoned like this. What do you think happened?"

"Oh, the guys have theories," said Shiki.

"They don't have anything better to do?" asked Neku, "Don't answer that."

As they moved farther up the street, a distinct sound became apparent to Sora. A thudding, thunking noise. Rhythmic.

"Oh, he's at it again..." Shiki rolled her eyes.

Neku almost smiled, "Now I _know_ you must be alone. Probably scared away every coyote for miles."

A voice soon joined the rhythm, heavy, thick, yet determinedly melodic, " _Come on over, take a seat/Get ready to feel the heat..._ "

"You'd think he'd have figured out harder rhymes by now," pointed out Neku.

"... _I'm sleek, I'm sweet, I'm on quick on my feet/Pushing on through rain, snow and sleet..._ "

"Aw, man..." Sora smiled despite himself, getting kinda into the whole thing. Neku looked at him as if he were diseased or something, and Sora decided that his rescuer was determined to beat the mad scientists at the 'No Personality' game.

"... _You think you're neat, you think you can compete/Boy, it ain't winning if you've got to cheat/And I'd sooner lose than be incom..._ "

"Beat!" Shiki announced, very loudly, as they reached what Sora supposed must be the town square.

There were two figures sitting on the edge of a dried up stone fountain, a guy and a girl. The guy had been rapping, and making the, well...beats, clapping his hands down on the rim of the fountain basin. He looked up as they approached, an oversize skullcap waving around loosely over his head.

"What the frick, Pussycat?" he demanded, "You're breaking up my..."

But he looked past her, and his glower transformed at once into a stupid, doofy grin, "Phones?"

"Um..." Sora began, but Beat had already gotten to his feet (huh, he really _did_ have it easy), and crossed the square in two strides toward them.

"No way, man!" he took Neku by the shoulders and looked him up and down, "No _freaking_ way..."

"Good to see you too, Skulls," Neku said, his usual flat affectation seeming for almost a moment to give way to something halfway genuine.

"You got out?" Beat asked, "Hell, yeah, you did! Knew it was only a matter of time, I was just telling..."

He trailed off, looking over Sora's way, "Who's this guy?"

"Um..." Sora began, "Well, I'm..."

"Ahem," Shiki seemed to have gleefully assumed the role of hostess. Cradling Mr. Mew up by her face, she looked around at all of them, "Beat, this is Sora. Sora, this is Beat. He and Neku got out together."

Beat scrutinized Sora, brow furrowed in an expression of intense concentration. Sora took this ample opportunity to size him up himself. Muscle shirt, cargo cut-offs, combat boots...at this point, the skullcap was just overkill.

"So, they made a guinea pig outta you too, yeah?"

"Er...yeah."

"S'cool. Welcome to the club." His attitude was suddenly brusque and terse, as if Sora _hadn't_ just seen him get all gummy over Neku.

"So...um...is Beat, like, your rapper name?"

He heard an audible sigh from what he assumed must be Neku, as Beat got very rigid, asking, in a thin whisper, "What'd you say?"

"I...um...I just thought. It's kinda clever. Because you write beats, and...so...if you picked the name..."

"Beat's my _name_ ," he said, "Got it, Sarah?"

Sora reddened, " _Sora_."

"Appreciate it, Sarah."

"Where's Rhyme?" asked Shiki suddenly.

" _Rhyme_?"

"Oh, there she is!"

The second person sitting by the fountain had stood up as they arrived. A tiny, mousy girl...maybe 12 or 13. She had on a hat too, a big floppy thing that nearly hid her face. She smiled sheepishly at them, waving her hand.

"Hey," Sora waved back, a little awkwardly.

"She's pleased to meet you," said Shiki, "She's just kinda shy."

"She your sister, or something?" Sora asked Beat.

"How'd you know?"

"Well, I just...yanno, because..."

But he decided not to pursue that any more than he had already.

"She hasn't gotten better?" Neku asked. Beat's expression darkened and he shoved his hands into his pockets. Shiki sighed, rubbing her hands together, "She's a _bit_ better. I mean, she knows who _we_ are. And...sometimes she kinda says something. Or she starts too."

Sora felt a chill down his spine, "They...they did something to her?"

Beat gnashed his teeth as Shiki anxiously scratched Mr. Mew between the ears.

"They did something to _all_ of us," said Neku, "Don't you _get_ it?"

Sora flinched, "No! No, I don't. Because, this whole time, you haven't been _explaining_ anything to..."

"He has a point," said Shiki, "We should explain everything. Remember how clueless _I_ was?"

"You're different," said Neku.

"Aw, thanks," she smiled sweetly, but just as quickly took on a more serious tack, turning back to Sora, "I don't know how much you know about what goes on at...at that place..."

"He knows enough," said Neku, "He knows he's important."

"I know they _think_ I'm important!" spat Sora, "I don't know why. And, frankly, I'm kinda fed up with trying to guess..."

"There's a project," said Neku, "Something they've been trying to do for...a long time. Remember, 'Key That Connects Everything'?"

"Wait a second..." said Beat, "He's not..."

Shiki gasped, pressing a hand over her mouth.

"They think he is," said Neku, "The Skeleton Key."

"The..." Sora frowned, "the _what_?"

"It's _X_ -Corp's oldest project," said Neku, "Well, the oldest one that matters."

"There's another Skeleton Key," said Shiki helpfully, as if explaining it to a kid, "The first one. The...well, I guess you'd call it an experiment...it didn't work out that first time. So, they've been trying to _make_ it work. By finding _other_ people..."

"And making them into keys?"

"It's more complicated than that," said Neku dryly, "Not everybody's a match," he gestured around the square, "Case in point."

"Wait..." Sora looked from Neku,to Shiki,to Beat, to his tiny, quiet sister, "...all of you..."

Shiki sighed, flipping her hair over her shoulder and turning halfway, to give Sora a view of the tiny, faded _X_ carved into the back of her neck. Next to her, Beat had whipped off his skullcap, shaking out greasy locks to show a scar of his own. Even Rhyme sighed dolefully and pulled the collar of her oversize hoodie down to show her mark.

"You look so surprised?" Neku was running a finger down his own _X_ , "What, you haven't checked?"

"What..." Sora trailed off, "You don't mean...come on, I wasn't even there a week, and I was locked in a closet half that time. I think I woulda noticed if..."

He reached up to feel his neck and felt his fingers freeze there.

"Yeah," sighed Shiki, "I thought I woulda noticed too."

Numbly, Sora traced his finger along each of the lines in the scar, his breath short, labored, "I...I don't..."

"Still wondering why we can't tell anybody?" asked Neku, "Why we've gotta hide? We try to blow the lid off this thing..."

"We get our lids blown off," spat Beat, pulling his cap back on, "It ain't that easy."

"I...I didn't think..."

"No, of course you didn't," said Neku.

The sun was sinking over the mountains to the west, suffusing the square with a golden glow. But it wasn't warm, or comforting. Sora could feel a cold evening wind settling in. His legs wobbled beneath him.

"I...I thought..." he heard himself saying, "I'm stupid."

Beat shrugged, but Shiki glared at him. Sora didn't pay much attention, "I thought it was over."

"Yeah," said Shiki, "We all did. Thinking it doesn't make you dumb."

He lifted his head, looking around at them all. Neku was eyeing him with particular attention, "Look, it's not easy. But you still made it out. _We_ made it out. That's something."

"Something?" said Sora, "Sure... _something_. And now we just...stay hidden? Do nothing?" he shook his head, "I can't live with that. Sorry."

"You think I like it?" asked Beat, "It's the way it is. We lay low..."

"And we wait," said Neku.

"Wait for _what_?"

And, deadly serious, Neku told him, "For the game to change."

* * *

 **A/N:** And that's that for now! Next chapter was a big project, and features more of me experimenting with things I don't often fuss around with.

On that tantalizing note...see you next week!


	35. Bye Bye, Miss American Pie

Chapter 35, Bye, Bye Miss American Pie

 **A/N:** Two chapters for the price of one this week! Basically my way of apologizing for falling behind, and also because these two work better back to back, I think.

* * *

Sora was increasingly beginning to feel like some random nobody standing awkwardly on the sidelines of everybody else's story.

These other kids, Neku's gang, whatever, they spoke like they'd known each other for ages. Well, Rhyme didn't speak, she didn't say much of anything at all, but the _others_ were all chummy and easygoing and...

Well, okay, so Neku wasn't necessarily easy going, but he spoke more around Shiki and Beat than Sora had ever heard him speak when it was just them being cell buddies.

He was also...really short. Sora was only now noticing, but Shiki had half a head on him, and Beat was huge, Neku looking like some little dwarf dude walking between them. But they _listened_ to him, and he spoke with this weird authority.

They just...naturally deferred to him, as their leader.

It was impressive, and kind of scary too.

"And where _is_ he?" Neku was asking, moving briskly ahead of Sora along the narrow road.

"You know him, he comes, he goes, he never says nothing about it," Beat shrugged.

"He calls it 'scouting'. He runs off for a coupla days, comes back with stuff."

"Stuff?"

"Food, mostly," said Beat, "Less you thought we started growing out own."

"Here I thought I just missed the rice paddies."

"He brings newspapers to," says Shiki, "So we can see what's going on."

"Wait," said Sora, "There's _more_ of you?"

They all stopped in the middle of the road to look at him.

"Er...yeah?" said Shiki as if it should be obvious.

"J-dog," said Beat, "He's been about this shit longer than any of us."

Sora blinked, "And...uh...how long is that, exactly?"

"You'll have to ask him that," said Neku, "I'm sure he'll _love_ you."

"He don't like anybody."

"That was the _joke_ , Skulls."

"Alright, here we are!" Shiki reached a shopfront near the edge of town. The sign over the door was a perfect circle, waving back and forth in the wind off the mountains, though the painted lettering was faded from age, making it impossible to read.

Shiki held open the door, allowing Mr. Mew to dash past her, jumping with feline grace onto the nearest surface...a low shop counter. The others all followed inside. It was a dingy place, a few chairs and bean bags of various sizes and in varying stages of disrepair had all been clustered around in a tight circle.

"This is like our HQ!" announced Shiki, "Snug, right?"

"Real cozy," but Neku almost smiled as he said it.

"You all sleep in here?" asked Sora.

Shiki nodded, making one of her noises of affirmation. Sora frowned, "So...why don't you, like, spread out?"

"Huh?"

"I mean...you've got basically the entire place to yourselves. You could always..."

"Not a good idea," said Beat.

"Er...why not?"

Shiki pawed the floor nervously, hands clasped together. Beat glowered at him, "Just stay put, alright? Don't be a wiseass."

"I bet you guys are hungry!" said Shiki, "Go on, sit down, I'll grab you something!"

Sora eyed one of the beanbag chairs nervously, but decided to hell with it, sinking down and, almost at once, feeling a real, uncommon comfort.

He hadn't really _sat_ down, not to relax, not in so long...

Not since home.

"Chips or cheese curls?" Shiki held up two oversize bags, retrieved from some nook behind the counter.

"You guys been eating well, then?" asked Neku.

Shiki rolled her eyes, "Sorry we haven't been able to get all five food groups. You think I _like_ all this greasy stuff? I've got a figure to consider."

This comment seemed intended to draw the collective attention to Shiki's impossible waist. Sora decided not to comment on it, not only because he knew he was on the rocks enough with these people, but because Kairi and Selphie would probably have taken turns ragging on him for it if they were here.

"Ahem?"

"Ahem...what?" Sora looked up at her.

"Chips? Or cheese curls? You're new, so I'm asking you."

Sora looked sideways at Neku, who didn't even seem to be paying much attention, "Er...chips, I guess?"

"Natch!"

"What?"

" _Catch_!"

And she threw the bag at him. Mr. Mew blinked at him as if in judgment from his perch on the counter. Sora caught it deftly enough, glad his reflexes hadn't been entirely shot.

"Nice save, Lockpick," remarked Neku dryly.

"Thanks," Sora opened the bag, trying not to pass out at the gross, overpowering, _amazing_ scent of salty, greasy potato chips.

He must've scarfed down God knows how many before he was aware of eyes on him. Remembering self-consciousness, he turned to see Rhyme sitting on the beanbag next to him, just...watching.

"Oh," said Sora, "Um...want one?" he offered her the bag, and she accepted, smiling at him, letting it crunch between her teeth.

"Watch it, sis," Beat cautioned, "No knowing where he's been."

Rhyme gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes, "Fine. Guess she likes you."

"Oh," Sora looked back at her, "Thanks."

She shrugged.

They'd said something about her having a bad memory. How they could figure that out when she didn't seem able to _talk_ was a mystery, but Sora decided he would get nothing out of them by asking.

"Oh, wait a sec!" Beat got to his feet.

"What's up?" asked Shiki.

"Just hold tight," and he opened a door at the other end of the room. Sora heard footsteps going upstairs.

Shiki sighed, "So, Sora...I guess you've got a lot of questions, huh?"

"Kind of an understatement."

"I guess we owe you an explanation?"

"I mean, if you want..."

"Oh, great! I'll go first."

"First?"

"Yeah, we can all introduce ourselves to you. Like icebreakers."

Sora blinked, "Oh."

He'd been expecting maybe something a bit heavier than pocket bios, but he might as well just take whatever he was given at this point.

"So, I'm Shiki Misaki..."

"Shiki like Freaky?" Sora couldn't help but smile.

"You got it!"

Neku rolled his eyes. Sora ignored him,"And..how did you end up in that Icebox?"

She shrugged, "I was in an accident. They took me to a hospital, tried to fix me...I don't really know, I was sorta passed out most of the time..."

"Shiki..." began Neku...

"No, no, it's okay," she lifted herself onto the counter, swinging her legs over to the other side and letting Mr. Mew lean his head in her lap so she could pet him.

"Y'see, I...I didn't really have anybody looking after me, so there was nobody to sign off on those papers about...what to do if they couldn't wake me up," she shrugged, "That's where _they_ came in. They signed some stuff, I guess, kept it all quiet...and I ended up with them."

"So...they faked your death?"

"I guess. I really don't know. It's not like I've gotten a lot of chances to poke my nose around since I've gotten out. I know nobody's gonna be looking for me. That's what they count on. Kids nobody's gonna miss."

There was a crunching from next to Sora. Rhyme kept on helping herself, eating one chip at a time, and chewing with careful deliberation.

"Here we go!" and Beat burst back into the room, holding some purple, clunky thing in one hand, "Brought you a present."

Neku looked up, his eyes widening, "That's not..."

"Can't be Phones without your phones," and he tossed the pair of headphones over to Neku, who caught them at once.

"You held onto them?"

"Don't say I never did nothing for ya."

Neku turned them over in his hands, looking back up at Beat, "Thanks, man."

"Hey, I owed you one."

"We were just telling our stories!" said Shiki, "Getting Sora up to speed."

"Dope," and he sank into a beanbag of his own.

Shiki frowned, " _Maybe_ you want to go next?"

Beat looked from Shiki to Neku who, however grateful he might've felt, didn't seem ready to start talking, and sighed.

"Not much to say. Rhyme was in trouble, I had to go get her..."

"They got...your sister first?" Sora looked over at Rhyme, who had gotten still, just chewing slowly, not looking at any of them in particular.

"It's okay," he said, speaking to Beat but not looking away from Rhyme, "You don't...you don't have to go into it."

Beat just shrugged, which Sora decided to take as a sign that he wouldn't.

Neku interjected, "You want me to tell you a story?"

"I mean...if you want too."

"Not a lot to tell. I ran away, thought I'd find something better than what I was leaving. I was wrong."

There was a silence. Sora shifted around in his seat. Shiki picked up Mr. Mew and walked around the counter, heading over to him.

"Maybe you wanna tell us a little about yourself?"

Sora chuckled dryly. He supposed he could be as cagey or evasive as well...almost all of them, but he decided that wouldn't be fair. These guys had no real reason to trust him and every reason to be suspicious.

 _They were locked up there..._ way _longer than you were._

Maybe they were resentful. Or maybe they were just sad.

He sighed, "Well...I'm Sora. I'm 18."

"Hey, Sora!" Shiki twiddled her fingers at him, giggling.

"Is this when you tell us you're an alcoholic?" but Neku was smiling.

Sora rolled his eyes, "I...I was taken by those guys at _X_ -Corp...well, first I was taken by the Styx and Stones. The gang?"

"We know 'em," said Beat, something of an edge to his words.

"They didn't even _want_ me. They wanted this...guy I was with. Riku."

"He's the guy that visited you, right?" asked Neku, "Back in the Icebox?"

Sora nodded, "I...um...I thought he was the reason my..." he faltered, "my girlfriend Kairi disappeared. I don't know, but maybe _X_ -Corp has her too."

Shiki gasped, pressing one hand to her mouth in this little, kinda fake but weirdly sincere gesture that made Sora almost smile.

"They, the Styx and Stones, they wanted Riku, not me."

"But they took you anyway?" Beat scoffed, "Figures. Frigging scumbags."

"We tried to get away, Riku and I... We were on his bike, in this tunnel, and...shit, this one time, he rode off this ramp and...it was kinda awesome. But I let go...and he pulled up, and that's how we got separated.

"In the Underworld, they...they put me into this fighting pit. I dunno if you guys know it, they call it the Coliseum?"

None of them made any gesture to show they understood, but then again all four of them were very still, as if listening intently.

"They basically wanted me to fight for my life from Day 1. If I won, fine, if I lost...well, then I wasn't their problem anymore, I guess."

"You must've been so scared," said Shiki.

"I was, yeah," he realized now, his voice was shaking, "I was _really_ scared," a tiny, shaky laugh escaped him, "I didn't know what the hell I was doing..."

"But you did something anyway, right?" asked Neku, "Or else I wouldn't have met you."

"I did what I could..." Sora indicated the scar on his leg, "One of the...one of the dogs in the pit, it gave me this."

"Shit," remarked Beat.

"Then, at one point, I was _this_ close to dying. One of the other fighters, she was right on top of me... And then there's this explosion and the whole freaking wall comes apart..." he was speaking faster now, gaining momentum, "I don't know how I didn't get crushed. And then...out of the dark...it's his fucking motorcycle."

" _No_!" gasped Shiki, looking delighted.

"I still don't know how he did it. I...I never asked him. But he said...he said he couldn't leave that place without making sure I got out of there too. Because I was only there because of him. So we got out together..."

"How?" Shiki was leaning forward, almost off her seat.

"We...um..." Sora smiled despite himself, "We took the train. Yeah, we hopped this commuter train. Would've made it home too, but... Some crazy fuck with an eyepatch showed up and he chased us right down the train. We climbed up on the roof... Jumped off..."

He sighed, looking up at them, "And then..."

"And then?" Beat prompted, drumming his fingers on one knee.

 _And then Riku got all weird and told you he'd been crushing on you since you were kids, and you acted like a major asshole and left him, and then you both got kidnapped. Again. Go figure._

"That's how I ended up at _X_ -Corp," he said at last, "They caught up to me next to the train tracks."

"Riku too?" asked Shiki.

Sora nodded, "Riku too. It's just that I got out and he didn't...and I still have no clue where Kairi is."

There was a long silence. Finally, Shiki said, "You'll find them, Sora."

"How? How am I gonna find _anyone_ stuck here?"

"Watch it, man..." warned Beat, "You think _we_ like it?"

"I know you don't."

"You _know_?"

"I mean...of course you don't like it! But don't you get...frustrated?"

Neku crossed his arms, "I've _been_ frustrated, Lockpick. But you know what's funny? I've only been hanging around here an hour and I'm less frustrated than I've been in a long time. Take what you can get."

"This isn't the nicest place," said Shiki, "But it's _our_ place. And, it's weird, but...you get used to it."

"Used to it?"

Shiki just nodded.

There was an uncertain silence. Finally, Sora got up, "I'm...er...I'm kinda wiped. Is there any place I can..."

Shiki nodded, "Upstairs. We think it used to be where the owners slept."

"Thanks," he hesitated, "And...er...I'm sorry. If I'm...if I'm being a jackass. Or whatever."

"Yeah," said Beat, which wasn't very reassuring, but Sora wasn't going to stay here and argue about it. He headed to the stairs and started up.

The apartment was behind a door on the landing. There was a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom. All the furniture was old and in disrepair, but the place looked very lived in. Sheets and pillows were spread over every surface, heaping piles of junk food on the kitchen counters and the coffee table. There were posters on the wall, mostly for bands and movies, lots of them Sora didn't recognize.

There were aerosol cans too, loads of them, just lying around or heaped up in the corners. Spray paint, Sora thought, in all colors.

He bent down to pick one up.

"You tag?"

He gasped, whirling around, only to find Neku, leaning in the doorway, "Tag?"

"Eh, of course not. You're a _jock_."

Sora shrugged, "You mean, like, graffiti?"

"That's what they call it," he looked at the cans, "Jesus, they've been stockpiling, haven't they? Must've remembered."

"You...you paint?" Sora saw Neku's expression and corrected himself, "You tag?"

"Everybody's got a talent," he picked up one of the cans, "Maybe I'll show you one of these days."

Sora blinked, "Were you...were you just being _nice_?"

Neku eyed him and Sora sighed, "Sorry. That was..."

"It's nothing," said Neku, "Listen, I know I come off as a giant prick sometimes. And I know Shiki and Beat are a lot to get used to. But we take care of each other. You get that, right?"

Sora opened his mouth to retort, but closed it, sighing, "Yeah...yeah, I do. My friends and I...they annoy the hell out of me sometimes, but I love them."

"Friends?" Neku cocked an eyebrow.

"You don't think they're your friends?"

"We're sharing some shitty circumstances. I don't get attached to people."

"Nah, you prefer vandalizing their property," Sora shook the can around, prompting Neku to snatch it back.

"Yeah, never shake a can like that. Not if you're not gonna use it," he turned as if to go, and Sora nearly let him, but he felt he couldn't, not until he'd gotten another word in.

"I saw your face."

Neku stopped and turned to look at him, "My face?"

"When Beat gave you the headphones back. You looked really happy."

"I'm sure there's a point to this."

"Just...I dunno. I think _he_ thinks he's your friend."

There was a silence. Finally, Neku said, "He probably does. That's his problem. 'Night, Lockpick."

And he was gone. Sora looked around the apartment, half expecting one of the others to come up to bed too. But he could hear them all chattering downstairs, just like old pals.

Looked like he'd have privacy for a while longer.

He couldn't tell which of the various bedrolls, cots and other assorted heaps of linen were taken, or if any of them really were, permanently. But, figuring he'd want to stay out of everybody's way, Sora moved to the tiny heap of sheets closest to the old metal radiator which, this town being entirely off the grid as it were, was cold as ice, and lay down.

He saw her just as his head hit the pillow, standing at the other end of the room, almost shrouded in darkness.

"Holy crap!" Sora reared up, backing furiously against the wall.

"Comfy?" she asked softly, sweetly, cocking her head to the side, "You must be tired."

He couldn't believe it, couldn't understand, "K-Kairi?"

She frowned, folding her arms in front of her. She was dressed as he'd last seen her, light green skirt, red and black flannel shirt, her big canvas bookbag slung over one shoulder.

"You don't _get_ it, do you?" she asked, chuckling softly, "I guess that's no big surprise."

"You're...you're not really here, are you?"

"You're talking to me. That means I'm here."

"But..." his heart skipped a beat, he rose carefully, beginning to move toward her, but Kairi turned away.

"Do you remember the game?"

Sora blinked, "What...what game?"

"One wears black and one wears white?" she cocked an eyebrow, "Come on. _Please_ , Sora."

She said his name, and he stopped short, this wave of...emotion, feeling that he couldn't quite understand.

Suddenly, he felt some great crushing guilt weighing down on him, "Kairi...I'm sorry. I am _so_ sorry."

And she sighed, shaking her head, "Sorry isn't enough."

And she was gone. No puff, no flash, no rattling boom... Just gone, as if she'd never been there in the first place. Sora remained rooted in place, watching the spot where she'd been, waiting for something and both hopeful and terrified that it would happen.

* * *

"This is it?"

"Nice place for a family vacation," remarked Irvine, putting Tidus's car into park in the shadow of the big, chipped sign proclaiming 'MAIN STREET, U.S.A.: OUR LAND IS YOUR LAND!'

"Isn't it...this land is your land?" asked Zack.

"That's the theory, but at least these guys are honest about it," Selphie undid her seat belt, looking over her three assorted accomplices, "Everybody good?"

"Honestly?" asked Zack, "I kinda thought I'd need to pee by now, but I don't, but I keep thinking I'm _going_ to..."

"Eh, you're just nervous," said Irvine.

"What, you're not?"

Irvine shrugged, "No time to be nervous, there's shit to do."

"You rehearsing one liners to go with your boom stick?" asked Selphie dryly.

"Hey, you're gonna be singing a different tune when my boom stick saves your life."

"Yeah, sure," she undid the locks, "Come on, out of the car."

"We're _walking_?" asked Zack.

"We're _here_ ," said Selphie, "What do you want to do, drive around and honk until the kidnappers pop out?"

"Road's pretty uneven too," pointed out Irvine, "We get a flat, we're gonna have to walk back home anyway."

"That's comforting," said Selphie, opening the door and stepping out onto the aforementioned cobblestones.

"Creepy place..." remarked Zack, stepping out of the backseat and offering Namine a tentative hand to help her out. She accepted it with something almost like a smile, then joined the rest of them in looking around at this tiny forgotten cluster of turn of the century commerce.

"It's so quiet..." Selphie agreed, turning to Zack.

"Perfect spot for a murder,"

"Ach!" she spun around to face Irvine, "Screw off."

"Aw, c'mon, you knew it was me."

"That's why I said 'screw off', dickhead."

"Wow, okay..." he adjusted his hat on his head, "We should look around, yeah?"

Selphie looked at him, unimpressed, "Yeah. Maybe we should knock on doors, ask if anybody's seen some droopy-eyed quarterback..."

"Linebacker, Tidus is the linebacker."

"Then who's the quarterback?"

Zack opened his mouth as if to answer, but Irvine interrupted him, "Who gives an actual frick? C'mon, we've got a dude to...undistress."

Selphie rolled her eyes but made to follow him anyway, starting down what she supposed what must be the Main Street of the titular U.S.A. The mountains ahead of them were huge, looming and menacing, like enormous stone barricades in the dark. She could hear the wind whistling, howling off the higher peaks.

The whole place seemed cold and desolate, barren.

"What do you think happened?" she asked at one point.

"To Tidus?" asked Zack.

"Probably nothing nice," said Irvine.

"The _town_."

"Oh..." Zack looked around, "Well, the postcard made it sound like some kinda vacation place. With, yanno...ski slopes and stores and everything. Maybe there weren't enough tourists."

"Maybe..." Selphie looked around, "Still,it's just...it's weird a place like this just hanging around in the middle of nowhere, nobody doing anything about it."

"What're they supposed to do about it Selph?" asked Irvine, "Knock it down?"

"Better than just leaving it here collecting dust."

"Because that's the first thing on the minds of the guys who build these places," Irvine looked at her, "Selphie, people don't clean up their messes. Fact of life. They spend their money, build their money traps, and...when they stop making money they give up and try someplace else."

"And then a gang of kidnappers decides to move in?"

"Eh, circle of life."

There was a slam from a little way over. Namine froze at once, and the rest of them turned sharply, Irvine lifting the shotgun and aiming it at what appeared to be a toffee shop across the road.

"You hear that?" asked Zack.

Selphie nodded, hushed, "Like a...a door shutting."

"Came from the next block," Irvine nodded in that direction.

"What should we do?"

Irvine looked at Zack, "Well, _you_ guys can puss out here if you want. I'm gonna check it out."

Zack glowered at him, "I'm going with you."

"Wait, wait, stop it!"

The two boys looked at her.

"Don't you think maybe this is a _tittle_ bit convenient? Like, we show up, there's not a creature stirring anywhere...and then this really loud _noticeable_ noise out of nowhere? What if it's a trap?"

Zack sighed, "Didn't think of that."

"Well, that's why I'm here. Call it a woman's touch."

"So, what?" asked Irvine, "Maybe it _is_ a trap, but we're here to _find_ these fucks, aren't we?"

"Oh, so we get caught in a trap but, don't worry, Cowboy Rambo over here is gonna empty his gun into them while the rest of us hide under his coat?"

"Hey, there was just _one_ gun, it's not my fault..."

"It's not about the gun, Jesus!"

"Guys."

" _What?_ " they both demanded from Zack, rounding on him. He nodded back across the street, the opposite side from that banging noise.

"I saw something, that alley, between those two buildings...a shadow, or something. Someone ran past."

"Huh..." Irvine thought for approximately half a second, "We should split up."

"Are you _out of your mind_?"

"We can cover more ground."

"Which team gets the gun and which gets the coma patient?"

"Hey, we both know she's more than a coma patient. Hell, if we were ranking people, I'd put her above Fair any day."

"Thanks, man."

"We are sticking together and that is..." Selphie looked around, trailing off mid-sentence, "Where's Namine?"

"What do you mean, she's right..." Zack stopped, seeing as well that there silent companion had vanished, "Oh, shit."

"How much do we wanna bet she can teleport too?" suggested Irvine.

"We have to find her."

"Why?" Irvine blinked, "Seriously, I'm pretty sure she can take care of..."

There was a distinct, clear noise. A stumbling, a muffled gasp, from nearby. They looked at each other, Selphie feeling a fresh new layer of goosebumps run up and down her arms, the back of her neck.

"Come on," Selphie told then, and to their credit, neither boy protested, both of them following her down the alley Zack had indicated, which debouched into a short stone wall, up to about their waists.

"It went that way," said Zack, indicating their left, "Whatever I saw."

So they went that way, the narrow strip between the back of the shops and the wall. Selphie could hear Irvine panting a little behind her, probably weighed down by the gun. Zack, for his part, was putting those running back muscles to work, sprinting ahead of them, heavy boots splashing into shallow slushy puddles.

"Hold up!" Irvine grabbed wildly for Selphie's hand, causing her to almost trip forward.

"What?"

He held the gun up, the barrel nearly grazing her face as he trained it on a rooftop, "Don't you see it?"

"See _what_?"

"On...on the roof. There was..."

"There's nobody there, Sharpshooter, now c'mon we're losing Zack."

"He'll be fine, Selph, but I know I..."

"There's nobody there!"

"Let me make sure, okay? You find Zack if you want to, but I'm pretty sure even _he's_ not that stupid."

Selphie glowered at him, but she knew she would get no further with him, so let Irvine shoulder his shotgun and clamber onto a dumpster to get better purchase on the wall next to them, and then to the roof across the way.

She didn't linger to see him through to the top, continuing the way Zack had gone.

 _So much for sticking together. Why don't people listen to you?_

In Namine's defense, at least, Selphie still wasn't sure how much of a concept of 'listening' she had, outside of that uncanny _understanding_ she seemed to have over people. What Irvine insisted on calling her 'voodoo'.

Eventually she came to the end of the strip, where the wall to her right extended into the lane ahead of her, blocking the way, ensuring no exit short of jumping the wall or squeezing through the adjacent alley...

There was a motorcycle parked right in front of the wall, a big monstrous affair, huge wheels, gleaming black fixtures.

"Oh my God..." Selphie stumbled to a stop, "Oh hell..."

It could, of course, just be an ordinary motorcycle, no connection to assassination attempts on local authority figures or warring biker gangs in general.

This could also be a wild fever dream and none of this could actually be happening. Why not? Anything's possible.

She looked from the wall to the alley, thinking fast...

 _Zack could've hopped the wall. Why not? He's fast, strong, he could figure it out. But Namine..._

No way. She would've taken the wall and Zack, hopefully, would've been smart enough to do the...

"Argh!" a cry from down the alley. Selphie felt the blood drain from her face, sprinting down the alley, which opened into a cobblestone plaza, built around a fountain. Zack was here, lying on his side on the floor, wincing. He looked up as Selphie arrived, "Selphie, wait..."

Too late. She practically ran into the barrel of the gun herself.

"Not another step," he warned, training the long, thin rifle on her. His voice was deep, yet low. He was not raising his voice, he didn't even sound angry.

This wasn't the kind of guy who _needed_ to, of course. He must've been seven feet tall, broad-shouldered, absolutely huge. Selphie noticed a leather duster, a thin white scarf, the kind bikers wear...combat boots.

A series of thin scars along his face, including over one of his eyes.

He manipulated the gun with one huge hand, the other arm around Namine, holding her to his side. She looked past him, meeting Selphie's eyes. Selphie couldn't be sure if she was frightened or confused or...anything really. If anything she looked only mildly distressed, which seemed to just be a resting expression of hers.

"Selphie..." Zack warned her again, "C'mon, Selph, go!"

There was a welt on his face, raw and ruddy. The sight of it made Selphie's stomach turn as much as it filled her with anger.

"I'm not going anywhere," she told Zack, bending down to help him to his feet.

"I don't want to hurt you," warned the big guy.

"That's nice. You still did," Selphie said tersely, "Now, you let her go."

There was a short silence, "You're together?"

Selphie frowned, "...what?"

"You arrived here together? It's a simple question."

Selphie hesitated, "...yes. But she's got nothing to do with..."

"You have no idea, do you?"

"Where's Irvine?" Zack whispered in her ear.

"Off being useless, as usual," she replied, turning back to the big guy, "She's completely harmless. You want a dangerous twit, look at me."

"Selphie..."

"Just let her go."

"Leave," he spoke over her, "I won't ask again."

"Selphie, go," Zack told her, "I'll get Namine..."

"Fat chance. I already tried the running away thing, it didn't take."

"I'll trade!" Selphie tried, "Hand over the girl, you can have me."

"Selphie!"

"What fun's a hostage if she can't talk your ear off, right? You can have me, but you let my friends go."

His eyes glinted, "What do you think..."

"Freeze!"

* * *

"It's a ski resort," said Tifa, stepping out of the patrol car, "Or, well, it _was._ "

"And now it's a hideout for a biker gang?" asked Squall.

"Well, technically, _that's_ their headquarters," she nodded up to the mountain peak that loomed over the little cluster of shops, "Wind Makers are all about style. Think we should radio into Harvey?"

"No use," said Squall, "Lines are still jammed." he followed her out of the car, slamming the door behind him.

"Just you and me, then," said Tifa, "Doesn't it just tickle you?"

He glared at her and she rolled her eyes, "If it's any comfort, I've got your back."

He nodded curtly, not sure what she wanted him to say to that. Well, actually, he _did_ have some idea. Taking two steps forward, he slowed down and turned back to her.

"I've got yours."

"Naturally," she looked around, "Okay, let's go."

"If the headquarters is on _top_ of the mountain..." Squall began, heading off at her side.

"It is that, yes," she agreed.

"How are we getting up there?"

Tifa cocked an eyebrow, "I dunno, you think I've been here before? You're the biker expert."

Squall glared at her, "Different bikers."

But she scoffed, "We'll figure something out. It's a ski resort, they've got to have, like, those lift things."

"Cable cars?"

"Whatever."

"Are we forgetting the whole county-wide power outage?"

"No," Tifa hesitated, " _But_ given the evidence, these guys have something to do with that... They wouldn't strand themselves on their own mountain. Probably a generator somewhere," she shrugged, "Or we could, yanno, climb the mountain in a pinch."

Squall decided not to dignify that with a comment.

"We'll be fine," she assured him, "You've fought bigger baddies before."

Again, he wasn't sure if she was just getting a dig in or if she really meant that. She seemed determined to straddle the line of sincerity and snark for as long as she could.

"Well, well, well..." Tifa announced, moving ahead of him, "Look what we've got here."

"A car," Squall remarked, joining her, "Not the best parking space,"

Tifa looked from the sedan to what must be the town side rising up from the road next to it, "Should we give them a ticket?"

He blinked at her and she rolled her eyes, "So...what do we think?"

"Not what you expect a biker to drive around in."

"Because it's not a bike?"

Squall eyed her, "It's a second hand sedan. If the gangs go in for cars, they usually spring for something fancier."

Axel and his Corvette. Seifer and his Bentley. He'd been so proud of that thing, even if he claimed he was in no way proud of how he'd earned it.

"So we've got a third party hanging around here? Or just some abandoned jalopy?"

"Can't be abandoned. You see any other cars? Whoever this belongs to came here recently."

"Just _how_ recently is the mystery," said Tifa, "You know what I think?"

He looked at her, and she told him, "We're walking in on a party."

"You mean someone else..."

"I mean people don't just roll up to a place like this without a damn good reason. And people like the guys in _charge_ at this place? They don't take very kindly to strangers."

Squall considered, "A party."

"Fashionably late, as ever," Tifa agreed, "We'd better..."

A cry, echoing off the sides of the shops, from somewhere up the high street. Squall's hand went to his service weapon at once, and Tifa's to her own. Without another second, they hurried off up the road, Squall drawing his weapon from his holster.

The high street opened out into a wide plaza with a dried up fountain in the center, and a big, high roofed building just beyond it. Judging by the outline of thin wires extending up behind it, that building was the cable car station.

But it wasn't that that demanded Squall's attention as he and Tifa got closer.

A man stood right before the fountain, tall, broad, menacing leather duster. There was a girl just behind him...a hostage? Somebody else had run out from a side street, a girl, but it had been a boy's voice crying out...

"Freeze!" Squall warned, coming to a stop, training his weapon on the party.

The man in the duster rounded on him at once, sawed-off shotgun in hand, all but shoving the petite blond behind him. The other two whirled on him as well...gingery girl in bell-bottom jeans (wait a second...) and, on the floor, a faint red mark on his face...

" _Zack_?"

He looked up at her, expression a weird mix of very relieved and very, very confused, " _Tifa_?"

Squall recognized him too, and the girl as well, of course. Without looking at his partner he asked her, "You know him?"

"I knew his brother," she replied cleanly.

 _His brother...Small fucking goddamn world._

Figures that the moment he'd begun to forget about the two birds he'd been charged of bringing to order, focus instead on the job he'd been assigned, the two lines would converge more conveniently than could be considered comfortable.

But it wasn't the time to press Tifa on her heretofore undisclosed relationship with an Underworld pit fighter and hired gun.

Still, she asked him, "How do you know him?"

"I questioned them a coupla days ago. They were witnesses to a murder."

Tifa just looked at him, askance, "You could have mentioned that..."

"Oh my God, _stop with the gossip_ , the big guy's got a gun!"

The girl. Squall had almost forgotten her dulcet charms. He supposed he should be lucky _she_ wasn't the one being used as a hostage, they'd all be in considerably deeper dung.

"Duly noted, kiddo," said Tifa dryly, not moving her weapon from the eponymous 'big guy'.

"It's Selphie, right?" Squall looked at her.

"Selphie it is," she said thinly.

"And...Zack?"

The kid, now on his feet, nodded hesitantly.

"Maybe we can skip the icebreakers," said Selphie, "Before Thuggicus Rufficus busts a cap in my friend?"

"Stay calm, honey," Tifa said kindly, but firmly, "Just stay calm, take a step back. You're all gonna be fine."

Selphie didn't look convinced, but Squall did have to give Tifa's patience some credit. It had the desired effect and Selphie backed up, if only a little.

"This what the Wind Makers are up to now?" Squall turned his attention to the big guy, "Hiding behind little girls?"

"You seem to have a sight problem," the man told him, his voice stentorian, but calm, very placid, "You'll notice the girl is behind me. And I'm not holding her there. I'm sure if she so desired, she could return to her friends whenever she pleased. I wouldn't stop her."

"Bullshit!" said Selphie.

"Easy, baby," Tifa cautioned, holding up one hand in warning.

"She _can't_ move," said Selphie, "He doesn't have to do anything to her, she's probably just fritzed out in the head again."

Squall could feel Tifa looking at him questioningly. He only gave her a tiny shrug in response. What did she expect? An index of brain disorders? Perhaps he should have asked for Mr. Smee's business card before leaving his office.

"There's...there's something off with her, Tifa," said Zack in a more measured voice, appealing only to his brother's friend, "She just showed up out of nowhere days ago..."

"Walked onto the football field," Squall finished for him, prompting Zack to nod.

The night that girl had been killed, the night he'd gotten out of the Underworld. Things seemed to be fitting together, even if they still made no discernible pattern.

"She doesn't know where she is, half the time, I don't think she even knows _who_ she is..."

"She knows enough," said Selphie, "Sometimes. What, is that it?" she took another step closer to the big guy, despite Zack hurriedly trying to hold her back.

"Watch it!" Squall warned, stepping forward at Tifa's side. The big guy put a precautionary hand on the little blond's arm, his other hand gripping tightly to the shotgun, he kept it trained, not on Selphie, however, but on Squall and Tifa.

Smart. The girl had a lot of fire, but she wasn't armed, and (Squall considered with an unpleasant lurch) he wouldn't need a gun to take care of her if he wanted to.

"Talk to me, honey," said Tifa placatingly, "Just look at me..."

"I'm not your _honey_ , what're you, 60?"

"She's 24," muttered Zack.

"25, Zack, but good rounding. Zack, tell her to calm down."

"He's not my therapist, he doesn't need t tell me a rootin' tootin' thing!" Selphie exclaimed, "Don't you guys _get it_? This guy wants Namine, probably for his biker bosses, _that's_ why he was at the station, that's why he..."

"The station?" Squall looked from Selphie to the big guy, who remained inscrutable as ever, "You were at the DPD?"

"What, you don't know?" Selphie turned to him, "God, Kairi's Gran was right about you guys..."

" _What happened_?"

"He shot your boss!" Selphie said, throwing her arms in the air, "Made a big damn scene too. Makes sense if he wanted to get her away from all the cops."

Ratcliff...biggest, most blustery idiot a cop could have for a superior. Squall wasn't sure _what_ he was thinking, but it wasn't quite pity. There was no time for pity now. He had to think. He had to be rational about this. It was the only way _to_ be.

"That true?" asked Tifa in ringing tones, "You assassinated a _police commissioner_? I always thought the Wind Makers had more sense."

"You weren't misinformed."

"About the sense or the shooting?" Tifa's fingers tightening on the gun, "You don't want to hurt the girl? Fine. But a young lady learns not to take things on belief. Drop the shotgun, step away from her, and you come quietly."

"I mean the girl no harm!" he raised his voice for the first time, the words ringing off the shops to either side of them, "Nobody needs to get hurt. But I don't think I need to impress upon you, officers, that this place is not one for children..."

"Except for the ones you kidnap, right?" Squall suggested, "The boys you...brainwash with all your stories of youthful revolution, kicking the Man's ass, wearing the badge of brotherhood. The girls you drag from their homes at gunpoint, sell into slavery..."

"You've not the faintest idea what's going on here, Leonhart."

"You know who I am? I'm flattered."

"Squall," Tifa barely a whisper, "You see that?"

His eyes flicked around the plaza, trying to pinpoint what, exactly, she was talking about. No luck. Maybe a shadow high against a wall somewhere down the block, a faint rustle of movement. Could've been the wind, could've been nothing.

He dared not take his eyes from the scene before him.

"This girl is no ordinary girl," the big guy continued, oblivious to Squall's momentary distraction, "You can't be expected to understand that, but understand she will be safer with me than anywhere else..."

"For Christ's sake!" Selphie interjected, "Stop _listening_ to him! We already know what he wants, at least what matters! He's gonna grab her, lock her up, hold her for ransom, just like with Tidus!"

"Tidus?"

Squall had nearly forgotten, the second boy from the apartment, Zack's teammate.

"You took him too?" Squall demanded, training his weapon right over the big guy's head, "That's the gangs' game now? Kidnapping kids?"

And here, the big guy's face registered emotion for the first time: a monstrous, destructive fury that twisted his face into something nigh unrecognizable.

In a booming voice, he stepped forward, the shotgun lifted at Squall, "You force my hand! I wanted no bloodshed, but so help me..."

A shot rang out, loud and clear, echoing across the entire plaza. Selphie screamed, Tifa let out a cry, Squall braced himself...

He hadn't been shot.

"Boom, baby!" some wild, mildly accented voice cried out in jubilation, "That's what I'm fucking talking..."

" _Irvine_!" cried Selphie, half relieved, half indignant. The big guy was on one knee, pressing a hand to his shoulder, where blood was beginning to pool between his fingers.

"I think that merits at least _one_ get out of jail free..."

"Guys!" Zack, crying out a warning. They all turned, almost as a body, in time to see the figure falling from the roof of the toffee shop across the plaza, limp, heavy...

And crashing like a load of stones on the cobblestones before them.

* * *

"Keep up. Come on."

"If I have to hear that _one_ more time..." began Larxene through gritted teeth, but Saix gave her a light swat on the small of the back, and she continued on with a sour expression.

Their new best friend, lady of the olive skin and the impossibly voluminous hairdo, was meticulously bent on a schedule she refused to tell them anything about.

After insisting she drive their patrol car to an undisclosed location, with only the vaguest of assurances their mutual quarry would be waiting at the other end, she took them on a several hours' long odyssey north, in which to even _think_ of human speech was inadvisable.

Suffice to say, she and Zazu had not become friends.

She wouldn't give them her name either. Saix had never bothered asking for it in the first place, figuring he would have no luck where that was concerned, but Larxene was nothing if not stubborn.

And now that they were here, in this forgotten shell of Americana flung up against the mountains, she had only become more stony, more fixed on her goal. She kept that sidearm of hers holstered at her side, but her hand was always never more than a hair's breadth from it.

But what she was waiting for, if anything, she would not tell them.

"This way," she told them, jogging ahead over one narrow lane, and hauling herself atop an old cart, maybe a newspaper stand, from which she grabbed onto the gable of a shop labeled something like 'Boots and Shoes', "We'll want to stick to the roofs."

"You're kidding," said Larxene dryly.

She turned back, green eyes blazing angrily, "Better vantage point. I thought you told me you were a biker."

"They have flying bikes where you come from, Fox Force Five?"

She didn't dignify that with a comment, instead climbing from the cart to the rooftop with almost no effort at all.

"I tell you, if she ends up pulling a fast one on us, I will...Saix?"

He blinked, looking up at her, "What?" he asked, maybe more irritated than he should've betrayed.

She crossed her arms, "You okay?"

"Peaches and cream."

"It's just...you looked a little peaky."

" _Peaky_?"

"You know how many colds I had to nurse Dem through?" she cocked her head to the side, "Listen, you wanna sit and rest a sec, I'll tell her you went off to take a piss. No problem."

"And what if whoever we're climbing to the roofs to avoid spots us? I'm _fine_ , Larxene."

She hesitated, unconvinced, but she relented. Saix figured she would. She wanted answers as much as he did, irritated though she may have been with their unreliable tour guide.

And he was fine. He _was_ fine. Just...just a lot of stress, he hadn't slept in two days, barely eaten... He was tired. Tired and restless and...

 _And without your trusty prescription coping mechanism._

But he shut that voice up at once. It wouldn't do to think about it, it would accomplish absolutely nothing. He had to press on. They had to find Axel, Axel and...whoever this was Larxene claimed he'd run off with.

That was the mission. Shouldn't let some twitchy fingers and a cold sweat, keep his mind off of it.

"You ever been here before?" he asked Larxene, watching as she stepped up onto the cart, waiting half a second as if expecting their friend to give her a hand from the roof, and then, finding that was too good to hope for, just climbing up herself.

"Wind Maker headquarters? We were in the same gang, you know I didn't."

"Yeah...yeah, stupid of me. Sorry," he gave her his hand, wondering if she could feel it shaking.

If she did, she gave no indication, hauling him up onto the chipped red tiles of the rooftop alongside her.

"Besides, I'm pretty sure the haunted ski resort thing is new," she finished, brushing some loose hair from her eyes, "They used to be based in Departure. I never knew this place existed."

"It doesn't."

They both looked up to regard their guide, who was leaning against a chimney post, arms crossed, watching them impatiently, "Not officially. The whole place was condemned after some incident back in the day. We're talking thirty, forty years. They left it to rot."

"You know about it, then?" asked Larxene.

"I know enough. Now stay quiet. We're bound to find them eventually."

"Them? The people we're looking for or the people who shot at us?"

"You're not gonna find your boys down here," she said dryly, nodding at the imposing figure of the mountain peak looming above them, "Wind Makers have a particular way of dealing with prisoners."

Saix looked at her, brow furrowing in consternation, "What's on the mountain?"

"I told you. A ski lodge."

"And they just lock their undesirables in a sauna and call it a day?" asked Larxene, "Listen, lady, I know you've got no reason to trust us, but if you want us to tag along, we could at least use a..."

" _Want_ you? When did I ever give the impression I _wanted_ you to tag along? Believe me, I much prefer to be alone. I'm doing you a favor."

"Because you're just _so_ kind. Wanna know something?"

"Not particularly."

Larxene ignored that, "I think you're full of shit."

She smiled the only smile she seemed to know...enigmatic, all-knowing, "Don't you, now?"

"As a matter of fact, I'm kinda kicking myself because...well, as a reasonably intelligent person, I should probably have figured this was all some giant honking waste of time at best and _at worse_ , a trap."

She raised those two thin black eyebrows, "What could I _possibly_ have to gain from trapping you?"

"I've given up on the 'why' of things. Lately, I'm more willing to believe people just do shitty things for the hell of it."

"You're sick of me?" she prompted, "Fine. Head off, find your own way. I'd feel a great deal safer."

"Sure. Got any climbing gear?"

"Stop it," said Saix shortly, pressing one hand to his forehead, "Both of you."

Larxene rolled her eyes, but the other woman only fixed her lips into a thin line, "You wanna give orders, Baby Blue?"

Saix blinked, "What's that?"

"Saix..." Larxene interjected.

 _It's nothing. Stop it. It's a stupid name, it always has been. Probably just picked it out of a bunch of nothing in her head. She's got no way of knowing..._

Sure. She probably didn't have any way of knowing. Didn't mean he had to like it. Didn't mean he could just _forget_. Old words crackling through a radio, faux intelligent nonsense pouring out into a cramped car...

' _You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last/But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast..._ '

Urgency, whispers, the feeling that if he didn't act now it was all over, he might as well have never begun at all...

"Say it again," he prompted, "What you said. Repeat it."

She scowled at him, "I'm in no mood for playground tussles, kid. We're in something of a high stakes situation."

"Didn't stop you from saying it the first time."

"Saix, come on..."

"Shut _up_ , Larxene!"

He pushed past her, taking another step toward the woman, who looked on impassively, those feline green eyes surveying him. Only her hand moved, quickly, for the holster at her waist.

He did the same.

' _Yonder stands your orphan with his gun/Crying like a fire in the sun..._ '

"Jesus!" Larxene tried to step between them, but they were too close to each other, each with their guns drawn, aimed at the other.

Larxene drew her own gun, aiming it from one to the other of them in a general sense, "We're seriously doing this?"

"Say it..." there was a quiet vehemence in his voice. Were those _tears_ he felt in his eyes? They barely felt real. This whole thing felt charged, heated...like some crazy hallucination.

But she was real, those cold, mocking green eyes were real. The gun in her hands, that was real. The gun in his hands...

Fuck. Real too.

"Say it!" he demanded, "You want to jerk us around, make us look like a pair of idiots, insult us to our faces... _say it_!"

" _Look out the saints are comin' through/And it's all over now..._ "

"Baby blue," she shrugged, "Can we cool our heels now?"

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, lowering the gun. She didn't, not at once, regarding him suspiciously.

"Saix..." began Larxene, drawing up closer to his side, "Saix, are you..."

"Fine," he told her.

"Don't give me that," she grabbed onto his arm, fixing him with her eyes, " _I've_ called you worse in the last 24 hours, forget the last ten years, you never tried to shoot me."

"Just drop it, Larxene..."

"Do you honestly think you can just..."

" _Drop it_ ,"

Her eyes glimmered, she gritted her teeth, but she did let go of him. For a moment, the briefest of moments, he felt pity... This was Larxene, she was in as much trouble as he was, she wanted to get to the end of this as much...

She had no way of knowing. None of them did.

None of them...

But _Larxene_...

A short, distinct scream caught them all off guard. Latent reflexes sprang to life, all three of them dropping to their knees at various points around the chimney piece.

Saix looked out over the edge. He heard Larxene mutter a cuss in his ear, "Fucking hell... _kids_."

Kids indeed. Four, in fact, engaged in lively chitchat as if this was just some Friday night mall spree.

"Screw off."

"Aw, c'mon, you knew it was me."

"That's why I said 'screw off', dickhead."

"I know that one," said Saix, turning back to Larxene.

"Shh!" the other woman hissed. Larxene flipped her the bird, returning her attention to Saix, "Letterman?"

"Nah, Cowboy," Saix indicated him with a nod, "Irvine Kinneas. Sells drugs to high schoolers."

"Gotta love an enterprising youth," she frowned, "Fuck, is that a _rifle_?"

"Looks like one. But he usually sticks to petty vandalism and coordinated exhaustion tactics."

"What are they doing _here_?"

They both looked to their third for comment, but she gave none, instead leaning back, eyes widening with a new attention.

"What's up?" Larxene asked her, predictably getting no response before she unholstered her gun and, back bent down, started down the length of the roofs, up the street, giving them a gesture that said quite plainly 'stay the shit put'.

"Oh, I _hate_ her," snarled Larxene, getting to her feet and making to follow anyway. Saix did the same.

The kids were still talking down in the street, voices faded, but still quite clear given the decent acoustics and the fact that none of them seemed interested in keeping a low profile.

"What're they supposed to do about it Selph? Knock it down?"

"Better than just leaving it here collecting dust."

Their guide was pursuing _something_ , that was plain to see. She moved from roof to roof quickly and with a clear purpose, not once looking back to make sure they weren't following her.

"Selphie, people don't clean up their messes. Fact of life. They spend their money, build their money traps, and...when they stop making money they give up and try someplace else."

"And then a gang of kidnappers decides to move in?"

"Eh, circle of life."

A loud, clear slamming noise echoed over the street. Saix pinpointed the noise at once, rounding on his heel.

"Car," he whispered to Larxene, who merely nodded, in agreement and understanding. She leaned closer, "Should I check it out?"

Saix opened his mouth to say something and, in the next moment, saw two things at once. One: their guide coming to a sudden stop up against the steeple of some pretty building that might've been a church, positioning herself as if at the ready and, two: a short, diminutive figure dashing over a side street just out of these kids' line of sight.

His mind was made up.

"You stay on that, I've got her," and he already was moving after her. Larxene spoke after him, "Wait, what..."

But he was already on his way, moving quickly, eyes not on their guide, but on the figure he'd spotted, running between buildings, hugging some high stone wall.

The kids must've noticed too. He could make out some kind of debate.

"We should split up."

"Are you _out of your mind_?"

"We can cover more ground."

"Which team gets the gun and which gets the coma patient?"

"Hey, we both know she's more than a coma patient..."

Saix dropped from one roof to another, bypassing the wall. Yes, he could see him clearly now as he switched to the roofs. Short, stout, faded military jacket...

Big floppy gardening hat. But what the hell...

"Don't you see it?"

"See _what_?"

"On...on the roof."

Kinneas's voice. Saix froze, dropped by the nearest chimney piece.

 _If you get caught by some high school drug dealer..._

"There's nobody there, Sharpshooter, now c'mon we're losing Zack."

"He'll be fine, Selph, but I know I..."

"There's nobody there!"

"Let me make sure, okay? You find Zack if you want to, but I'm pretty sure even _he's_ not that stupid."

Saix dropped from the roof to the rusty metal window trellis directly below, bracing himself, teeth clenched. He could hear quick, nimble climbing, the pattering of footsteps going on past him down the alley.

He dared not peek over the top, for risk of catching Kinneas's attention. So he reached from the trellis to the sill of the opposite building's window, climbing carefully, carefully over to the next shop. As he went, he caught the barest glimpse of Irvine looking around on the rooftop he'd just left, holding that big rifle, brow furrowed in concentration.

He'd just climbed onto the next roof when he heard the cry from down below, the clear noise of a hand striking flesh, a thud on the cobblestones of the ground.

There was somebody else down there...

Saix lifted his eyes. He was positioned now, at the northeast corner of what must be the town square, looking down at some big dried out fountain basin. There was a small cluster of people standing there below. Some big guy in a leather duster...he had one of the girls positioned behind him. The kid in the letter jacket was sprawled on the floor, he was arguing with the other girl, who must have just emerged from the alley...

None of them had caught up, then. Did they even _know_ who they'd really been chasing?

Short, muted gasps caught Saix's attention. He lifted his eyes, and came face to face with a pair of big, terrified brown ones, nearly hidden under the brim of that ridiculous hat.

"P-p-please..." stuttering brokenly, a voice that was, itself, barely a whisper...

The kids were arguing again. Saix could barely hear them, they seemed suddenly to be miles and miles away.

"C'mon, Selph, go!"

"I'm not going anywhere."

Saix kept his eyes on the tiny, terrified man...well, man was barely a word for it. The tiny, terrified _boy_ backed up against the slanting slate of the rooftop.

"Please, don't...I-I promise I w-won't..."

"You're one of the Earthshakers," Saix said at last in a strained whisper, "Vivi, right?"

A shaky, terrified nod.

A deep voice from the square. It must be the guy in the duster, "You arrived here together? It's a simple question."

"...yes. But she's got nothing to do with..."

"You have no idea, do you?"

Saix took a short breath to control himself. He could feel the sweat matting on his brow, his hands shaking.

"You...you're the one who hacked the security cameras," he said as surely as he could, which wasn't a lot. His voice was tremulous as the rest of him, "The night of the break-out. Right?"

That had been the talk, at least. Only one kid in that gang who knew a damn thing about computers, it was the only suspect that made any sense.

No evidence, of course. No talk of charges.

"Axel...he needed someone to bust his buddy out," Saix continued, "He came to you. Right?"

Vivi was shaking furiously, "I...I d-didn't _want_ to...I t-told him it was dangerous, b-but, Axel..."

"Axel is a friend. And you owed him one."

Sheepish, Vivi nodded.

And, inexplicably, Saix felt a laugh come to his lips. An erratic, hoarse, _painful_ laugh. Vivi just looked at him, stark, unblinking...

Arguing continued down in the square, "Hand over the girl, you can have me."

"Selphie!"

Saix finally composed himself enough to ask, through still unsteady laughter, "How the _hell_ does he do that?"

And Vivi merely shook his head, a weird, tiny smile of his own spreading across his face.

"You can have me, but you let my friends go."

A note of anger in the big man's voice, "What do you think..."

"Freeze!"

Everything seemed to come to a jarring stop. At once, Saix dropped to his chest on the gable. He heard Vivi let out an alarmed gasp beside him.

 _No...no fucking way..._

But he looked over the roof, down into the square... And there he was. And there _she_ was, it wasn't enough to just be _one_ of them.

 _Small world is right._

Dammit.

Squall and Tifa were having some whispered altercation, both of them had their service weapons out, trained on the scene before them. The girl, Selphie, she finally had enough, interjecting, "Oh my God, _stop with the gossip_ , the big guy's got a gun!"

"Duly noted, kiddo," Tifa, about as casually authoritative as she'd been back in TPD. Saix was sure she and Squall provided nothing but good company to each other.

Saix desperately scanned the rooftops to either side and across the road. Kinneas had perched himself on a chimney piece, rifle held up alongside him like a sniper in his nest. He looked...well, he looked as confused as every single one of them in this three ring circus must.

Squall was putting the pressure on the guy in the duster, "This what the Wind Makers are up to now Hiding behind little girls?"

"You seem to have a sight problem. You'll notice the girl is behind me. And I'm not holding her there. I'm sure if she so desired, she could return to her friends whenever she pleased. I wouldn't stop her."

"Bullshit!" said Selphie.

"Easy, baby," Tifa cautioned, holding up one hand in warning.

Saix hurriedly scanned the rest of the rooftops. No sign of Larxene. It must have Squall and Tifa they'd heard before, getting out of their own patrol car. Saix didn't want to begin guessing what case had finally gotten Squall out of the Underworld, much less teamed up with Tifa Lockhart...

 _Can't guess? What's the one common denominator_?

Him. They were here looking for him. Why not? He already knew he was a wanted man, just as much as Larxene was a wanted woman. He'd heard the newscast at that fucking greasy spoon...hell, he'd probably made everything worse holding the place up, at least before there could be some doubt that he was a willing accomplice...

 _Accomplice. Why not? Get back in the groove of things. Always_ somebody's _accomplice. Same gang, different member._

Too similar reason.

"What are you doing here?" Saix turned to Vivi, forcing himself to continue, to stay on task, as much as the effort hurt, "What do they want with you?"

Vivi looked up at him. Saix noticed there were tears in his eyes.

"I...I h-helped them, I d-didn't want to..."

"Yeah, neither did I," Saix said, maybe too harshly, "You never _want_ to do it. But you've got to, right? For the gang. Because you owe them. Trust me. I get it."

"You're...you're a cop?" Vivi must recognize him, even if only a bit. Saix couldn't help but wonder, idly, if Axel had regaled him with any stories.

Moonboy and Destiny's Bitch.

"What I _am_ ," he said at last, "Is tired. Sick and tired of this shit. Backstabbing and alliances and secrets and fucking gang politics, I am _sick_ of it. You seem pretty smart. Maybe you are too."

Vivi said nothing to confirm nor deny that.

"You don't want to hurt the girl? Fine." Tifa, trying to moderate, "But a young lady learns not to take things on belief. Drop the shotgun, step away from her, and you come quietly."

"Who is he?" Saix asked Vivi, "One of you?"

Vivi shook his head, "W-wind Maker. Auron. He's...he's not..."

"He's holding a girl hostage."

"I don't know! I don't know why, he was supposed to be..."

"Except for the ones you kidnap, right?" Squall was speaking now, with some weird, constrained control.

"Just be honest!" Saix demanded, reaching forward, grabbing Vivi by the lapels of his jacket, "For Christ's sake, just _tell_ me!"

"The boys you...brainwash with all your stories of youthful revolution..."

"You owe them _nothing_. You hear me? Nothing."

"...kicking the Man's ass, wearing the badge of brotherhood..."

"These people would kill you themselves if it benefited. I am _trying_ to help you. I'm..." he broke off, realizing he was crying openly, "I'm just trying to help."

"For Christ's sake!" Selphie from down below, "Stop _listening_ to him! We already know what he wants, at least what matters!"

"You're in trouble," Saix told him, "I don't know why, I don't even know why I should care, but _dammit_ , I am trying to do the..."

The man, Auron, in a stentorian voice, the cocking of a shotgun, "You force my hand! I wanted no bloodshed, but so help me..."

A bang, a pop, a stink of cordite in the air. Saix threw himself to the tiles. Screams, cries, short swears... A short silence that seemed to stretch into hours.

Then...

"Boom, baby! That's what I'm fucking talking..."

"Kinneas," Saix sighed, pressing a hand to his heart, "Fucking..."

He turned to Vivi, a short, mildly hysterical laugh escaping him.

Vivi looked back at him, eyes wide, mouth hanging a little agape. There was something fixed, glassy in his face.

Saix realized what had happened only too late. The unlikely little biker thug pitched forward, onto the tiles, rolling down the slate, toward the square.

Saix heard more shouts from the square below, but he was not paying attention. He had eyes only for the church across the way, and the woman standing at the steeple, smoking gun held in both hands, face calm as stone.

They watched each other, him and her, for what felt like ages. Everything made sense at the same time as nothing did. The chaos in the square seemed miles away.

Not even thinking about it, Saix felt his own hand go for the weapon at his waist, drawing it out, aiming it across the street...

"Oh my God!"

"Figures..."

"Saix."

Squall's voice. They were all looking at him now, those with weapons had them raised. Saix was sure even the damn school drug dealer was eyeing him in those rifle sights as they spoke.

"What next?"demanded Selphie in mildly histrionic tones, "A masked maniac with a chainsaw?"

"Saix!" Squall continued, more assertively, "Drop the gun. Come down."

His hands were tight on the gun, clammy, shaking terribly, "It's...it's _not me_ , man."

"Where's Yuffie?" demanded Tifa, her voice betraying more emotion than was at all cop-like (though where the hell did he get off, right?), and also was more than he'd ever heard in her voice, "Or did you ditch both your ladies, huh?"

Larxene... He'd nearly forgotten Larxene. Fuck, where _was_ she?

"You _don't_ understand..." he told her, "For God's sake, you..." but something broke in his voice, "You think I _did_ something to them? To...to Yuffie?"

"I think you're in a lot of trouble," said Tifa, and Saix noticed she was determinedly taking on a different tone. Still firm, but not rough, like she was forcing herself to affect not just comportment... but some weird compassion as well.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

"I think you're cornered. You probably want to shoot me in the face..."

"Tifa..." said Squall, warningly.

 _Warningly_.

"You too?" Saix turned to him, "Squall...c'mon. You don't...you don't _honestly_ think... It was her! On the..."

But he looked up to the church. And of course she was gone. As if she'd never been there. As if he'd only imagined her. The others had followed his gaze, seen there was nothing to see.

He looked down. Vivi was sprawled out on the cobblestones, broken and splayed. He'd been shot pretty cleanly, but that was no different now. He'd landed on his head and...well, there wasn't very much of that left now.

 _No skull...no bullet wound...no good for ballistics._

No proof. His word against theirs. Again and again and again...

"Come down from there, Saix," Tifa continued, "You'll be better off."

"That's a threat?" he asked, looking down at her, "Where do _you_ get off?"

"I don't want to shoot you!" she cocked the barrel of her gun. The click was so distinct it might as well have been right in his ear.

"No, but you will..." Saix looked at her, "You will, and you'll feel bad, and then it will pass, and you'll say you've done the right thing. Because that's what we _all_ do, isn't it? What we have to, and we don't like, but we do, because..." he felt his voice catch, tears hot on his face, "Because people _need_ us, don't they? They need our...our help, and we have to help them, or what kind of cops are we? Cops and...and friends, and..."

"Is that what this is about?" asked Squall, "Your friend?"

Saix turned to him, so quickly he felt a sort of snap in his own wrists as he did, "My...my _friend_?"

"I met him. Remember? Insisted I call him Axelrod? I've wondered about him. You and him..."

"Well don't. You're gonna get the wrong idea."

"You care about him," Squall said in a measured voice, "I get that. Caring's hard, isn't it, man? Tells you to believe what you shouldn't, do things you wouldn't..."

"You don't know...you have _no_ idea..."

"Then tell me! Tell me, man. You're a good cop..." Squall hesitated, "A good man. You deserve better than this. You deserve better friends..."

Better friends.

Better _friends..._

" _So you_ do _know how to have fun?_ " fucking grin, that smile, leaning casually on one hand.

He had green eyes too. Feline, clever, witty...predatory. He hadn't realized it then. Saix supposed that made him the best prey anyone could've asked for.

He'd smiled back, feeling so stupid, " _I was always told I was a fast learner._ "

" _Then you've already got one up on me,_ " his hand in his, pulling him close, whispering in his ear, " _Till next time, Moonboy._ "

That song...the song, scratchy on the radio, soft, inevitable, almost spellbinding in its effect...

' _Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you/Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you..._ '

"You deserved a better superior," Squall continued, and for a brief second, it was almost like he was smiling, laughing at himself. Unlike him, foreign, alien... _fake_?

"I should never have let you get so close to that stupid case, I never should've brought you to that tattoo parlor..."

Tattoo parlor... Axel in his new life, shoved into the supply closet... Surprising anger, grabbing Saix by the wrist... forcing him to look at the moon on his wrist.

The brand.

" _And you're just as good a judge as I am, right Moonboy?_ " cold, accusatory.

Axel may be a hypocrite, but he knew Saix was too. It was just Saix's fault refusing to see it up until now...

' _The vagabond who's rapping at your door/Is standing in the clothes that you once wore..._ "

"We'll sort this out, man," Squall continued, "Listen, we've...we've both made some mistakes. Fucked things up for ourselves...for people we care about. I get it."

"You _can't_..." Saix shook his head, "Squall, you can _never_..."

"I can!" he said explosively, "You think you're the only guy who's ever fell in love? Let them down?"

"Stop it!"

Harsh words, not because of their tone, but because of their meaning, cold words, cruel lies, " _It's not me. It's not what you think. I'm sorry. But it's not_..."

"Feeling chained to them forever, having to always _make up for it_ , like you've got to fix some mistake you can't even describe, I _understand,_ Saix..."

' _Strike another match, go start anew/And it's all over now, baby blue..._ '

He let out with an explosive wail, blinded with tears, with anger, with hatred...

He heard the gunshot, felt it shake in in his hands, pitching him forward. Squall staggered back, let out a cry.

 _You did it. You shot him..._

A weird displacement seemed to settle on him. He felt the gun fall from his hands at the same time as he felt his feet give way beneath him.

He was falling, the wind giving way beneath him. Somebody else fired a shot, at him, probably, but it missed... Not the shotgun, it wasn't Auron, whoever the hell he was and whatever the hell he wanted...

He hit the cobblestones, maybe not with as much force as Vivi had, hut he heard a thud, a crunch, felt excruciating pain that sent lightning rods of pain through every inch of him...

Lightning rods... Electric green bolts painted on old brick walls, Larxene smirking proudly at her creation...

Where was she? Why the _hell_ did he care?

There was confusion, screams, someone starting back, he could hear muffled groans of pain...

Pain... Pain again. And again and again and again, constant as the rising of the...

He looked up, despite himself, at the cloudy night sky above. Of course there was no moon. How appropriate.

His gaze traveled back down, from the sky to the high roof of that big building across from the fountain from them...

"Oh my God..." Selphie, breathing the words, curt, alarmed. All the proof that he wasn't just seeing things.

There was somebody standing on the roof. Not _her_ , though. It was a man, shrouded in shadow...Saix could make out a coat, tossed off to the side by the night wind like some kind of cape. In the dark it was almost impossible to make out anything else about him... Anything but the flowing mane of bright silver hair, shocking in the darkness.

He stood there, watching them all, still as stone. Again a moment seemed to extend for ages...

It was Tifa who spoke first, "Run."

Selphie, " _What_?"

"Run!"

The next things happened very fast, too fast. The shadowy sentinel leaped down from the roof, landing fluidly, smoothly, almost as if floating down to the plaza. In the same motion, he had produced some instrument from that coat of his...something long, thing...its sharpness echoed through the square.

"Selphie!"

"Zack!"

"Watch out!"

" _Get out of here_!"

People were running, stumbling, somebody nearly tripped over him, Saix couldn't be sure who. Another gunshot rang out...maybe Kinneas, still perched on the rooftop as he was.

Tifa Lockhart stood her ground, standing in front of Squall, who was still and pale, Saix could hear shallow breaths.

 _You did that. You did that to him..._

A shot, another, Tifa this time. Saix didn't know if they connected, he could barely the shadow's footsteps, they were so swift, so quick...but they were unbroken.

He could feel the gun...his gun. It had fallen inches from his own fingertips. If he could reach it, if he could only...

Could only, could only...in time. In time. In time. If he could only get to it in time...

Almost. Almost there...

A boot came down hard on his hand, forcing his fingers apart. He let out a choked cry, his eyes opening wide..

He looked into his eyes. They were cold eyes...green eyes.

Again. Green eyes, in a cold, hawkish face. And it was like a hawk that he surveyed him, impersonal cold.

"Step away from him..." Tifa's voice, "It's not him you want."

He showed no sign of noticing, just looking into Saix's eyes, as if searching him, judging him...

Judgment. Welcome to motherfucking Erebus.

" _What they believed was, you took the boat down to Erebus..._ "

" _The guys with the bigass trucks that take up half the highway?_ "

Never any patience for Axel. Never, he didn't have the time, he he'd lied to himself.

"Greek _Erebus. The Underworld. The Land of the Dead. You take the boat down there, and then you sit in judgment._ "

" _And they decide if you go to heaven or hell?_ "

" _More or less. But mostly they just send you to Asphodel._ "

" _And what happens there?_ "

" _Nothing. That's the whole point. The way the Greeks saw it, most people weren't good or they weren't bad. So they spend the rest of forever just...walking around. Doing nothing._ "

" _Huh. That's depressing._ "

" _Isn't hell_ more _depressing?_ "

" _At least hell means you_ did _something. Me? At the end of it all, I'd sooner burn and say I_ did _something with my life than sit on my hands and wish I had._ "

" _What about heaven?_ "

That grin...he _loved_ that grin. He'd given anything to see it right now...just one more time, so he could laugh at it, spit at it, punch it...

So he could kiss it. Just one more time.

" _I ain't going to heaven, Moonboy. You? Maybe. Me, not a chance._ "

"Go ahead..." he looked up at the shadow, his voice breaking, "Do it. Just...just get it over with."

Maybe he'd get lucky. Maybe, one day, he'd see Axel in hell. And how fucking surprised he would be then.

Maybe they were more alike than he'd always thought.

Maybe Axel was better than him. Saix didn't think any of them had ever prepared to think that.

The shadow stared at him, studied him. Another moment that stretched into eons. Saix could feel the cold kiss of that long steel... _thing_ against the side of his face.

The shadow raised it, it must've been nearly as tall as he was, angled the sharpened point down, right between the eyes...

Saix felt it plunge down, pierce his skin, white hot pain...a horrible scream, another gunshot...

 _Fire, fire on your face, fire in your veins, fire pouring out of you... You might as well_ be _on fire._

 _But no moon in the sky. Never a fucking moon when you need one._


	36. Nightmare on Main Street

Chapter 36, Nightmare on Main Street

He was barely even a _he_...he didn't seem like anything that was _alive_ , at least, even though it moved. Its motion... _his_ motions, whatever, were so fluid, so smooth, and yet at the same time so weirdly mechanical.

The way he all but flew down from the rooftop, that weird, cape/coat thing trailing behind him, that absolutely impossible length of stark white hair.

Zack's cop lady had told her to run. Selphie knew she should, she should get the hell out of dodge as fast as possible, book it, run, hadn't she just been thinking how good she was at that? Where was that chutzpah _now_?

"Selphie!" a hand on her arm, whirling her around.

"Zack!" His eyes were wide in a white face, the red blemish the big guy had given up shining grotesquely against the rest of him.

He opened his mouth to say more, but Tifa beat him to it, "Watch out!" she had her gun trained on the... _thing_ , not turning to them as she cried out her warning.

"Selphie..." he turned back to her, "Get out of here."

"What?" she couldn't understand.

"Please, Selph... _go_."

"What about you?"

He didn't answer at once, but Selphie noticed his eye lingering on Leonhart, who was lying where he'd fallen, the front of his shirt rapidly turning red, chest rising and falling in uneven, frankly scary fits.

"I've gotta help him."

Selphie almost demanded to know _why_ , exactly, this was the case, but she knew Zack. She didn't need to know his reasons. She knew him enough.

She jabbed him in the chest, "You catch up with me. I'm waiting for you."

"Yeah...yeah, of course..."

"You _promise_ me!"

He didn't look entirely convinced, but he nodded, "I'll see you soon. Just...get someplace safe..."

"Safe..." she wasn't sure what exactly that meant in this context, but she nodded, throwing her arms around him in a hug, and hurrying off, so quickly she nearly tripped over Kooky Boy Blue who, himself, didn't seem in the most lucid state.

She looked at him for a moment, confused, yeah. She didn't get it...presumably he was a cop too, or he had been. As for whoever it was who was now a bright slick mess on the floor next to him...

Selphie decided not to think too much about it. Not until she was safely the hell away from...

Another gunshot, a bullet pinging uselessly off metal, a swear. Selphie gasped, throwing herself against the nearest wall.

"Shit, almost had him!"

" _Are you fucking nuts_?"

"What?" Irvine jumped down from the roof above her, swinging the rifle back over his back, "Is he immune to bullets?"

Two more shots from the direction of the square. Selphie turned back to Irvine, "Maybe. Come on!"

"Where's Fair?"

"Helping the cops."

"Oh, but _I'm_ fucking nuts, right?"

"Irvine, I swear to God..."

"Wait, where's Witchy Woman?"

"Could you _stop calling her_..." but she stopped short in the middle of the alley as the realization swept over her.

"Oh God."

"Wait, you forgot her?"

"Don't look at me like that, there was a lot going on!" fanning herself rapidly, Selphie struggle to compose herself, "We have to go back for her."

"Oh, so _you're_ fucking nuts. Noted. Selph, we can't..."

"Fine, be a pussy!" she all but screeched in his face, whirling on her heel and starting back down the alley.

A shadow fell over the mouth between two buildings, and she stopped in her tracks, "Oh, shit."

All the insanity, she almost forgot about big guy. Though Irvine _had_ gotten him in the shoulder, he was still standing upright, more or less, holding the shotgun in both hands. In the dark, he seemed like a huge, hulking monster, bent over and heaving with great breaths.

Selphie didn't wait another second, turning again and running off after Irvine.

"Him _again_?" Irvine asked.

"Maybe you should've shot him harder!"

He called something after them, but Selphie wasn't about to venture a guess as to what he wanted.

"Come on, this way!" Irvine grabbed her by the hand, starting around a corner...

And nearly crashing into some lady who'd been all but shoved from the next alley into her path.

Selphie stopped short, biting back a scream and looking up as _another_ woman, a wild-eyed blond in disheveled business casual approached from down the alley, eyes fixed on her evident victim, "Well, bitch?"

To whit, the other woman, a green-eyed, black haired beauty, pulled a gun on her...

" _Move_!" Irvine barreled into Selphie from behind, pushing her out from between the two women just ahead of a wild gunshot.

"Who are those two?" Selphie demanded as Irvine hauled her to her feet.

"Hell if I know, come on!"

"Stop yelling!"

" _Watch it!_ " another voice...Tifa, stumbling up the street, Zack at her side and the both of them supporting Leonhart between them.

"Zack!" Selphie called out, despite herself.

Zack was clearly laboring under the burden as he wheezed out, "Right behind us!"

Selphie didn't need to ask who. _It_ , the thing, the shadow, was moving quickly, alarmingly fast, that sharp, thin shard of metal in his hand held out in front of him, now much redder than it had been...

Irvine whipped out the rifle, aiming a shot, but Tifa cried out, "No! Just go!"

"But I've got him!"

"Irvine," Zack sounded almost girlish in his shriek, "for once in your life, _listen_!"

Selphie grabbed onto his arm, not liking the way the sudden motion brought the barrel of that gun _far_ too close to her face for comfort, continuing down the street.

"Some crazy shit around every corner!" she exclaimed breathlessly, "It's like a fucking _bazaar_!"

"What?"

"You know, in action movies? The guy and the girl are in the bazaar, and then the bad guys show up and..."

She figured he wasn't as blockbuster savvy as Tidus, and gave up, sufficing to say that, "We've got to get out of here!"

"Neato. Any ideas?"

"Tidus's car, by the sign, we should head there, wait for Zack."

"Eh, I kinda got turned around, but best bet is we parked somewhere behind crazy sword dude."

"Shit..." Selphie turned down another street, starting down a twisting alley...

" _Admit it_!" screamed a voice as, quite suddenly, that dark haired woman from before fell from a rooftop above and onto a dumpster, the wind well knocked out of her.

"Jesus Christ!" Selphie turned on her heel, running back the way she'd gone, not noticing at first that Irvine wasn't with her.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my... _ach_!" she let out an earsplitting scream, practically running into someone three heads taller than...

"Quiet," the big guy said curtly, sweeping Selphie up in one arm as easily as if she were a sack of potatoes.

Nothing in Selphie's lengthy repertoire of comebacks and reprimands had prepared her for the eventuality that she would one day be manhandled with bodily force by a shotgun wielding giant. Nevertheless, Selphie resolved to improvise.

"Let _go_ of me!" she commanded, slapping incessantly at his back, "Who the _hell_ do you think you are? I swear to God, if you don't put me down this instant, I will spit in your..."

"Drop the girl, Comanche," Irvine, helpful as ever, "Both of them."

"Both of..." Selphie lifted her head and noticed, for the first time, that there was somebody else slung over the big guy's other shoulder...Namine, still, silent...eyes closed.

She felt her breath catch in her lungs.

"Put down that gun," the big guy warned, "You don't know what you're doing."

"The hole in your shoulder begs to different."

Selphie suppressed a groan. No use demoralizing Irvine when her life might actually rest in his twitchy fin...

"It was _her_!"

The other woman's voice, from the alley. Selphie heard the by now quite familiar sound of a gun being cocked. She must have been standing on one of the rooftops, probably the same one she'd pushed the other one down from.

"Go on, admit it... _You_ shot the kid. I saw you."

"Who the _hell_ is she?" asked Irvine.

Big guy was ignoring him, "That's true? You shot the boy?"

"Hey, man, you know who I shot, and it wasn't..."

"Irvine, you idiot, he's not talking to you, he's..."

A gunshot, a woman groaned, Selphie cringed, squinting her eyes. The big gun rounded on his heel, started away from the alley...

Facing the opposite direction now, Selphie could see the dark-haired woman slumped up against the dumpster, face contorted in pain. Irvine was on the ground as if knocked aside, the other woman, the blond, the one on the roof...

But the big guy had already turned a corner, down the street.

"Where are you taking us?" Selphie asked, "Dammit, where are we going?"

"In case you haven't noticed," he replied, deathly calm, "We are under attack. Your only priority now should be safe..."

Selphie lifted her eyes and saw the shadowy, silvery figure standing at the end of the street, facing them.

"Behind you!" she cried in warning.

He moved immediately, whirling around, dumping Selphie and Namine both to the ground and, in the same motion, blasting a shot from his gun at the figure who, again, didn't move.

"Hell, it's not even _human_!" Selphie wheezed, feeling the breath thin in her lungs.

"Take your friend," the man told her, chambering another shot, "Find a place. Indoors. Hide."

"W-what?"

"Hide."

"What happened to _kidnapping_ me?"

But she wasn't about to question it. Namine was still groggy, but Selphie was able to help her to her feet, half dragging her

"It's okay...it's alright..." she panted, trying to reassure Namine, who teetering weirdly on her feet, her eyes glassy and glazed, "I'm about to have a heart attack, but it's alright. It's fine. We're fine..."

Namine slumped over, grabbing limply onto a lamppost as if to steady herself. Selphie reached for her, seized with a sudden terror.

"Hey, hey...you alright? Honey, he didn't _do_ anything to you, did he?"

Namine looked up at her, eye to eye. In a ghost of a voice, yet one strikingly clear all the same, she said, "Me."

"...w-what?"

Namine seized her by the arm. Selphie looked at her, as if frozen in place, some strange, foreign terror taking over her. She wanted to run, to cry, hell she might just have fainted herself. Her legs seemed to have forgotten to be, you know, legs...she swayed a little.

" _Me_ ," Namine said again, "Remembers...me."

"W-who? Not..."

Another shotgun blast. A cry. Selphie realized it didn't matter, not know, not when he was right there.

"You're gonna tell me all about it," she told her, "But first we're getting out of here."

It was running again, blade out. Selphie saw no sign of the big guy and his gun. She grabbed Namine's hand and ran for it.

The road was widening...with a start Selphie realized she was back in the square.

"Shit!" she exclaimed, looking from one still, splayed body to the other, hearing those footsteps, surprisingly light but gaining behind her.

She wasn't about to try another go around in the merry small town labyrinth. Looking one way, then the other, Selphie had her mind made up, and made a break for the big building opposite the fountain, where _It_ had first appeared.

"In here!" Selphie told her, throwing open the big doors and stepping aside so Namine can duck into the shadowy, cavernous place.

Selphie followed her, making sure to close the doors behind her, and let out a deep breath, looking around.

Big windows, if really grimy. There was a tall desk at the opposite end of the room. Selphie could make out shapes painted on the wall, like a mural, but age had faded it so much that it was impossible to make out what it had depicted.

There was a big open archway at the far end, leading out to the open air. Selphie could see the thin outline of wires stretching up into the sky beyond. Cable cars...this _was_ supposed to be a ski...

The sword was shoved through the door, right between Selphie and Namine. A scream erupted from her lungs, the bloody blade just inches from her face. She dove aside, watching Namine stagger back as well...

"Oh shit, oh God, oh _fuck_!" Selphie scrambled away on hands and knees, watching the sword wiggle around in the gap it had created before stopping, withdrawing...

The doors swung inward under a single kick, so strong that it sent one of them spinning off its hinges. Selphie let out a short gasp, pressing her hands over her mouth as It entered the room, looking around with that cold, impersonal stare. He really _did_ seem like something other than human... Scanning the room like some animal sniffing out prey.

Selphie could feel her heart beating in her chest, so hard and so fast that it hurt her.

 _Namine...Kairi, whatever. She's right there, in the open, she can't even hide. Go ahead, go on you idiot,_ help _her..._

She never should have come for her back at the police station. What the _hell_ had she been thinking? She wasn't helping her friend, she was just making things worse, making things more complicated, it was all she was good for, fudging things up, chickening out, only acting bold if it served to make things harder for everybody else...

It was moving deliberately through the room, weapon out... If Namine hadn't just been speaking loony again, It was looking for her.

Selphie couldn't let that happen. She would _not_ just sit back and hide this time. She refused, not now, not ever again.

So she got to her feet, cupped both hands around her mouth, and cried out, "Yo, Dracula! Looking for virgins?"

He turned to her, regarding her with that stare.

Selphie began to reconsider this plan, but fuck it, now that she'd begun, she wasn't about to scrap it now.

"Well, contrary to what you may have heard, here's one, standing right in front of you!" she pointed at herself with both hands, "What're you waiting for? I've had all my shots."

His face registered nothing. No anger, no frustration, not even an 'aw, look, it talks!' sort of amusement.

But he moved forward, slowly, deliberately.

 _Okay...that's the distract him part. What the hell next?_

The sensible impulse would be to run for it. Selphie decided that was an excellent idea, and put it to action at once, spinning on her heel and bolting as fast as she could. She could hear footsteps quickening behind her, feel the whoosh of air as that sword was raised again...

She came up against the wall...a dead end. Breathless, she turned around, saw him right upon her...

There was a shot, a bullet connected, not with _It_ , but with some big brass clock in the middle of the room.

"Girl, you _are_ nuts!"

Selphie looked up to see that familiar cowboy-hatted idiot perched up in the rafters, looking like he wasn't sure whether to laugh or scream in terror.

"Irvine, you idiot!" she exclaimed, both relieved and furious.

"Nice thing to say to the dude who saved your life."

"It was a _heroic sacrifice_ , he was going to kill..."

There was a metal clang, that familiar deep voice, "Move!" Selphie whirled around, just in time to see Zack's Tifa come stumbling in, her own gun out. She looked across the room to...well, Selphie didn't know who she was looking to, "Get those kids out of here!"

"Watch out!" Irvine, crying a warning. From up there, he must've seen something the rest of them couldn't...

Selphie felt a tearing at the wind right near her. A crash...the clock had been knocked clear of its pedestal, and _It_ was vaulting over it, blade out, heading right for...

" _NO_!"

* * *

Larxene didn't want to believe it at first. Everything had happened so fast, one crazy batshit thing upon another, that it was initially _easy_ to just write things off as imaginings and misunderstandings.

Larxene had already been frozen in place, grabbing with admittedly feeble strength to the tiles of the sloping roof next to her, looking for purchase as if she, too, were in danger of falling from the roof to the street below, bullet or no.

That kid, down in the street, his head reduced to a messy, chunky red pulp. They were all looking at Saix, they believed he'd shot the kid, killed him...

Idiots. If any of them had been paying attention, _really_ looking instead of trying to one up each other at one-liners, they would've had the sense to see the shot come from _across_ the street...

Larxene's side of the street, but not her roof. No, that bullet had been fired from the little church a few roofs down.

The woman didn't even flinch. Miss Fox Force Five with the fierce green eyes and the tangle of dark hair, sternly beautiful, no-nonsense. Larxene got the feeling that, were this a more pleasant situation, they either would have been fast friends or bitter rivals.

She'd known her fair share of hardass women back in her biker days. The whole thing was male dominated, wasn't until about a decade ago when women had been allowed to join up around here... So you felt that you had to overcompensate. You couldn't be funny, you couldn't be soft, and God help you if you were tried being _sexy_. That could go one of two ways, and neither was ever a good one.

Larxene had often shirked the sentiment, however. She could be just as girly as she wanted with the guys, screw what the rest of the gang said. Sure, no-nonsense Rex, don't fuck with her if you know what's good for you...

Rex, yanno, like the dinosaur? Dinosaurs are reptiles right? Well, they're also birds, Dem would've pointed out snootily. Still, presumably most of them were cold-blooded.

She'd had to be cold-blooded.

But Larxene had never known anything like the cold, steel composure in that woman's entire body as she lowered the gun she'd used to shoot that kid dead, lock eyes with Saix across the street...

And then vanish around the steeple of the church, as if it were nothing.

Immediately, Larxene knew this couldn't stand. No way, no how. She considered shouting out, calling attention to herself, but with at least one trigger happy kid perched on a rooftop somewhere, and both of those cops not looking too friendly, Larxene dismissed the thought.

After all, she was in the write-ups of this particular crime spree as either Saix's abductor or his accomplice. Either way, she was a murder suspect who'd escaped custody. They'd have no reason to believe a word out of her mouth.

And there was nothing about the green-eyed beauty in the police report. She may as well not even exist a far as those two down in the square were concerned.

So Larxene busied herself with making sure they _knew_ she existed.

She scanned the area around the church, looking for some sign of where she'd gone, if she climbed down, dropped to the alley behind, something...

They were trying to talk Saix down, like he was some maniac on a ledge.

Probably that's just what he was. What they thought he was.

"I think you're cornered," the woman, "You probably want to shoot me in the face..."

"Tifa..." the other one, Saix seemed to know him. They'd probably worked together.

"You too?" Saix's voice, tiny and broken, "Squall...c'mon. You don't...you don't _honestly_ think... It was her! On the..."

Larxene knew he wouldn't find her. That wasn't the plan. She'd vanished as quickly as she'd appeared, back in the...

Larxene stiffened, lifting her eyes with new attention. There, behind one of the stained glass windows of the church. A flicker of a shadow, clambering down from someplace higher above.

"Bitch thinks she's fancy," Larxene mused under her breath, resolving to prove she was fancier.

Saix was making some speech, she wasn't paying much attention, focused as she was on moving from roof to roof, closer to the church. She could see something like a hatch around the back side of the steeple. It must lead into the belfry, and from there down...

Larxene found it unlatched, even hanging a little open. She'd been in a hurry, with good reason.

Saix, his voice choked with tears, "Because people _need_ us, don't they? They need our...our help, and we have to help them, or what kind of cops are we? Cops and...and friends, and..."

"Is that what this is about? Your friend?"

Larxene felt her fingers hesitate on the latch, but she forced herself to press on, open the door, slip into the musty darkness of the church.

Larxene was standing on a narrow wooden trellis. Any other view she might've gotten was obscured by a tremendous brass bell which hung in the empty space beyond it. The windows, such as the one she'd seen the shadow through, were right below. She could see a ladder going down to the lower landing...

"You care about him," the other detective, presumably Squall Leonhart, of Earthshaker legend, "I get that. Caring's hard, isn't it, man? Tells you to believe what you shouldn't, do things you wouldn't..."

"You don't know...you have _no_ idea..."

"Then tell me! Tell me, man. You're a good cop... A good man. You deserve better than this. You deserve better friends..."

 _Where the hell does_ he _get off?_ Larxene couldn't help but think ruefully, hurrying around the side of the terrace to the ladder, _What does he think he knows?_

Although, Larxene thought with an unpleasant sinking feeling, he probably knew less than nothing. Saix wasn't one to talk about his past, she could believe that. Anything Squall Leonhart knew would've been surest conjecture.

It's just that the conjecture was very close to home. Maybe Saix just wasn't subtle about it. Never mind that he'd always been the subtlest of them, blue hair and all... But she could imagine all of that going away where Axel was concerned.

The voices faded to murmurs as Larxene started down the ladder, watching her step carefully in the dark. This ladder connected to a wider balcony midway down the belfry, right beneath that bell. She heard the wood creak under her weight, the sound eerily magnified, which couldn't possibly be good...

"Didn't take you for the religious type."

She saw the glint of green eyes watching her through a gap in the wooden slats. Larxene froze in place, her foot one rung from comparatively solid ground.

"Ditto. Guilty conscience?"

She cocked an eyebrow, studying Larxene with a low interest, "We'd be here all night."

And she promptly kicked the ladder over, sending it falling backward, and Larxene with it, an attempted scream ripped from her lungs and she fell through empty air...

And grabbed onto the balcony railing at the last second, hearing the ladder be smashed to timbers on the floor far below.

"Bitch!" Larxene hissed, legs kicking wildly in the air.

The woman leaned over the railing, placing her hands over hers, with a suddenness that nearly lost Larxene her already limited purchase.

"You know, I should've left you and Blue Boy in the dust when I had a chance."

"Yeah, you should've," said Larxene, attempting, very briefly, to haul herself back up to the balcony, but realizing it was no use. The wood was brittle, weak, and her instigator was very strong, her delicate, feminine hands considerably rougher than they appeared.

"Why'd you kill the kid?"

"Why do you care?"

Larxene stared, "He was a _kid_!"

"He was an idiot who fell in with a crowd of _malicious_ idiots, who he gratefully played village idiot too. He was an accomplice, a crook, and a crony and his death will not be mourned by the malicious idiots who set him up for it. I take no joy in doing what I have to..."

The railing groaned menacingly beneath their hands. Larxene let out a whimper, despite herself, looking up at her...

There was a flicker of something in her eyes. Was it...doubt? Guilt? Larxene felt her hands tightening over her own...

A bang, a blast from outside. Larxene heard shouts, screams, a sickening thud...

Somebody had been shot.

The next thing Larxene knew, she was falling again, though whether she'd let go or been dropped, she wasn't sure...she found she couldn't think of much at all.

All she could think of, weirdly, inexplicably and _hella_ inconveniently, was a glossy photograph, buried beneath a bunch of junk in an old attic. Four people, gathered around a musty yellow sofa...a girl, beret balanced jauntily on her head, a fiery red-head, grinning without a single earthly care...

A boy, really just a boy, looking like an absolute dork, posing with an oversize sitar. And, at the very far end, almost tucked out of sight, a skinny, pale kid in a sweater, hair tied up in a messy bun, eyes perpetually disinterested, but with a smile that belied so much more than the rest of his face told, even if it wasn't a very big smile.

It was the only smile Larxene had ever known him to have.

She landed with a thud, an earsplitting groan, against something smooth and solid... Larxene was 85 percent sure she should be dead, broken into bits as surely as that kid, as assuredly as whoever it was...no, she _knew_ who it was...who'd been shot and fallen from the roof shortly after...

But she was alive. And she hadn't hit the floor. There was some statue up at the front of the church: an angel, holding a big bowl out in front of her. The thing was marble, at least as high as the nave of the church...and it greatly shortened the fall from the belfry.

Unable to believe her own luck, and realizing she was _very_ sore in several places, Larxene forced herself to lean against the side of the bowl, looking down at the floor below. Still quite a fall, but maybe she could...

She was still standing on the balcony, looking down at her, as if in shock. Was she actually stunned? Had she actually _not_ meant to drop Larxene to her death?

How very charitable, Larxene thought as she grabbed for her gun, training it, not on the woman, but something considerably above her...

The bullet pinged off the bell, causing it to vibrate madly, its stentorian chime echoed throughout the church. Larxene heard a scream, could see her swaying for purchase on the balcony, hands pressed over her ears.

Letting out a short cackle of triumph, Larxene lifted herself over the side of the bowl, dropping from it into the crook of the angel's arm and, then with more precision, to the floor below. Still something of a distance, but enough for her to brace herself, land on her feet.

She looked up to the balcony as the ringing of the bell faded. Nobody there now...

There were noises from outside. Assorted cries, more gunfire. An actual shootout, but what the hell did those two fragmented bands of misfits have to shoot at _each other_ for?

Larxene didn't have time to think about this, as she was nearly bowled into by a very angry green eyed beauty, just charging from a door off the altar that, Larxene supposed, must lead to the stairs.

"Are you out of your mind?" she demanded.

"I don't you, you're the murderer!"

"This is a _much_ more dire situation that you are clearly capable of comprehending, so I won't do you the disservice of trying to explain..."

"You shot a kid and you might've gotten my friend killed for it, what more is there to explain..."

More gunfire from outside. Both of their heads turned at once.

Wordlessly, Larxene was pushed to the side, her nameless associate turned antagonist hurrying for the doors.

"Oh, no way in hell!" and Larxene pursued her right through the big doors...

The town square was chaos. Larxene could make out three figures hobbling down the road...the two cops, and one of the kids. The one in the middle didn't look too hot...

They were being chased down some sidestreet...Larxene caught only a hint of a black coat, a flash of silver hair...

"Who the hell is..." she began, before turning her attention to the figure sprawled out on the cobblestones, soaked in blood from some gash somewhere...she couldn't tell, everything was blurry, out of focus.

Larxene felt her legs wobble beneath her, her arms grab somewhere for purchase, grasping only air.

He was still, sprawled out...all red. That blue sweater, those white pants. He always looked so _clean_ , like the tiniest speck of dirt would drive him nuts.

There was a single, narrow gash over his face. Larxene couldn't tell how deep it was. She could barely even bring herself to look at him another second, just to make sure he was really, truly dead.

Her friend...her victim, once upon a time.

"I'm sorry,"

Larxene turned slowly to her, incredulous, "You're _sorry_?"

"I didn't mean for him to get involved. I...I heard that kid fire a shot, I thought it would make an excellent cover, I wasn't thinking..."

"That you could kill some kid and pin it on him?" Larxene rounded on her, furious, "No, of course not,why would you? That would be opportunistic, and soulless and heartless, and you, clearly are the _soul_ of compassion, the picture of honesty! I'd toast to you, if I knew what the hell your name was..."

She looked around, as if anxious, "Keep your voice down, for God's sake, we don't know what's..."

"You killed that kid and you set Saix up for it," Larxene trained the gun at her, "Admit it."

She lifted her hands over her head, stepping back, "Do you want an explanation, or do you want to get out of this place alive?"

"Don't give me that bullshit. You've dragged me up to this fucking boondock, and now there's at least _three_ people running around with murder with in their hearts, and I'm not even counting you. If this wasn't a trap, congratulations on setting up an immortal clsuterfuck. If I still had a sense of humor, I'd laugh, but as it is, I only want to ask you one thing..."

"Larxene..."

That was it. Something about her, saying her _name_ , like it meant anything, like saying it would appeal to some innate humanity in her...

She lifted the gun and swung it against her face, with enough force to send her tripping down the adjacent alleyway, hand pressed to a growing welt as she went sprawling on the pavement.

" _Admit it!_ " she demanded, fixing the gun back on her, barely aware of a pair of people approaching from the the side, two of the kids, she had no attention to give them, "Well, bitch?

" _Move_!" one of the kids, the drug dealer Saix had pointed out before. He pushed the girl forward, staggering past...

Larxene hesitated. She shouldn't have, shouldn't remembered who she was dealing with. _She_ had drawn her gun too, fired a shot just as the two kids cleared her. Larxene felt a burning pain her shoulder, forcing her up against the wall.

She pressed one hand to the stop, feeling it warm, wet and bloody...but the tear in her blouse indicated the shot had graced her. She'd at least screwed with the bitch's concentration.

"Gonna have to do better than..." she looked up, and saw the aforementioned bitch was already gone. A quick flash of movement over her head betrayed what had happened. She'd climbed up onto that stout wall across from Larxene, then used it for purchase to jump across. Back to the rooftops.

"I'm not done with you!" Larxene cried, climbing up onto the roof as well, taking advantage of a neatly placed dumpster.

She could see her moving quickly, desperately. In the street below, the kids were yelling at each other again.

"Some crazy shit around every corner! It's like a fucking _bazaar_!"

"What?"

"You know, in action movies? The guy and the girl are in the bazaar, and then the bad guys show up and..."

Larxene rolled her eyes, forcing herself to keep going, ignore the pain in her shoulder. She supposed she'd have to fashion some sort of tourniquet to stop the bleeding, but she wasn't too thrilled about the prospect.

In the street below, she could see Leonhart and his party...he was being supported by the other cop, one of the kids. He'd been shot, but Larxene couldn't begin to guess which one of them was responsible...

Not important. No, she had one goal in the moment, and...

There, leaping the narrow gap from one shop to the next, clearly intent on just disappearing into the nooks and crannies of this small town facismile hellhole...

Her eyes lifted up to meet Larxene's, she froze, as if shocked she'd bothered.

Larxene was kind of shocked too.

She launched herself forward, pushing into her, " _Admit it!_ "

She fell off the roof, onto a dumpster in the _next_ alley below.

"Jesus Christ!" the girl cried out below, trying to run back... Larxene wasn't watching, focusing on her gun, the woman sprawled out beneath her, suitably winded.

There was more talk from down the alley. One of the others had shown up, some sort of altercation, Larxene couldn't pay it any mind.

She was going to get the truth out of this woman, if it killed her.

"It was _her_!"

That shut the rest of them up. Larxene had the presence of mind to look that way. The big guy in the leather duster, he'd picked up both the girls, slung one over each shoulder. Ahead of him, the drug dealer, Irvine Kinneas, still holding that rifle as if he knew what the hell to do with it.

Then again, judging by the way Duster Dude was slouching, maybe he did.

The woman was staring up at her, green eyes contorted with hatred, even if she remained silent. Larxene pressed forward, "Go on, admit it. _You_ shot the kid. I saw you."

"Who the _hell_ is she?" asked Kinneas.

Duster Dude's interest seemed to be piqued, "That's true? You shot the boy?"

She turned to him, glared. Larxene realized there was hated in her eyes...she _knew_ this guy.

"Hey, man, you know who I shot, and it wasn't..."

"Irvine, you idiot, he's not talking to you, he's..."

Larxene pulled the trigger, not aiming to kill, just hobble her. A spurt of blood from the knee, she groaned...

"Holy hell, woman," Kinneas gasped.

"Shut up," Larxene jumped down to the pavement, and he threw his hands over his head, setting the rifle down, "Hey, I don't want any trouble."

She pointed the gun at him, "Did you shoot him?"

" _What_?"

"Blue guy. Did you shoot him?"

"What, you mean the crying dude? Nobody shot him, dude fainted."

"Do you _honestly_ expect me to believe that?"

"Swear to God! He shot Leonhart and then spazzed right out."

Larxene felt her fingers twitch on the gun, "But...but the blood..."

"If you're asking me what _that_ thing was..."

"Thing?"

Kinneas looked like he wanted to say more to that, but his faced contorted into an expression of immense, almost stupid panic.

Larxene had a few choice words for that, but she had the presence of mind to turn around in time to see Miss Nine Lives herself reaching for her own weapon...

"Yaaah!" at which point Kinneas charged forward and rammed the butt of his rifle into the woman's forehead, knocking her out at once.

They just looked at her for some time after that, breathing heavily. She lay there, against the dumpster, face marked by two ugly bruises where both Larxene and this kid had pistol (well, _rifle_ in his case) whipped her, and blood steadily leaking out of what Larxene seriously hoped was a busted knee.

"I'm Irvine," he turned to her, holding out his hand.

Larxene looked at him, not sure if he was being serious, "How do you do?"

He withdrew his hand, "What's her story?"

"Well, yanno, I was wondering the same..."

"She's a cutthroat and a lackey to a lackey who doesn't like to cut his own throats.""

They both turned around, weapons raised, to behold Duster Dude had returned to the mouth of the alley, smoking shotgun in both hands, but not lifted toward them.

"Pretty words from the guy who hides behind little girls," remarked Irvine dryly.

"I don't expect you to understand my reasons, but know that I have them. None of you should've come here, and I can't begin to imagine why you did."

"Thought Selphie explained that much. Where _is_ Selphie?"

He nodded curtly, "Still alive, if she keeps her wits about her, and if we can get to her in time."

"You _left_ her with that thing?" demanded Irvine.

"I stayed behind to _fight_ that thing. It is inhumanly fast, unpredictable, and appears to be immune to bullets."

"What _is_ it?" demanded Larxene, "Jesus, you're making it sound like a monster!"

He eyed her, that one good eye shining unsettlingly, "Perhaps it is."

And he started off, "I will get those girls back safely. If you want to help me, do so, but quickly, quietly, and without..."

"Wait, wait, _wait_ a second!" said Larxene.

He didn't turn to look at her, already on the move, "I do not have the time to debate."

And Larxene decided he had a point there, swallowing the remainder of her questions and following him back into the plaza.

"So you're one of the Wind..." she began, but he turned and silenced her, a finger over his lips. Larxene quieted, giving him her best pair of murder eyes. But she listened, and she could hear. Footsteps, quickly, down the street.

He looked back to them, then nodded to the big building opposite the plaza's fountain. He next indicated a metal terllis off to the building's left side: a fire escape, leading up to a window. He then turned to indicate the building's left side, where a series of metal grates were lined up in the ground right smack against the building.

"We'll have to separate."

Larxene glared at him, "Excuse me?"

"He is fast, unpredictable. Even if we get to both girls in time, we will need to move quickly. You," he turned to Irvine, who nearly jumped out of his skin at the address.

"You can use that gun?"

"You tell me," Irvine eyed the wound in his shoulder.

The big guy didn't go much further on that score, "You will climb the fire escape, perch in the rafters. You get a shot, you take it..."

"You said he was bulletproof!"

"I said he _seems_ to be bulletproof. At any rate, you'll slow him down," his single eye hardened on Irvine, "You want to save your friends?"

And Irvine only tightened his grip on the gun, "If we make it out of this thing, you're keeping your mits off both of them. You hear me?"

He grimaced, but Irvine didn't try pushing for more, hurrying to the fire escape and leaping up to catch the lowest rung of the ladder.

"You. With me," he moved quickly to the nearest one of those metal grates, lifting it with his hands alone and indicating Larxene head down ahead of him.

"Well?" he prompted.

"It's just usually, I get a guy's name before we start prowling around in the depths together."

He dropped down ahead of her. Larxene rolled her eyes, and nursing the sting in her shoulder, dropped in after him.

It was some sort of ventilation shaft. Low, but qide, and stretching into darkness, presumably beneath the building. He moved on at once, back bent down. Larxene figured he must know the place pretty well.

"Can I ask a question, at least?"

"You can shut your mouth until we're done with this."

"You're one of the Wind Makers, right? Probably some head honcho, some big enforcer... They're _really_ kidnapping kids, now?"

He stopped abruptly, turning to her and, in a voice that belied a very well buried anger, said, "We're not in the habit of it."

"No..." Larxene agreed, "But maybe a...certain _kind_ of kid? I heard all that crock before...little blond one's friends think she's pretty special."

He didn't turn to her, but Larxene could tell he'd gotten very tense. Finally, he said, "You ask so many questions, and yet work among them. But no questions occurred to you, then?"

Larxene stopped short, "How...how do you know where I..."

"I make it my business to know things. But don't delude yourself that you're blameless in that place's sins. Anyone who ever clocked an hour in that place has some degree of culpability in it still running."

"Even the 6th grade dropout who sweeps the floors in the south lobby?" Larxene asked dryly. He stared at her, "You know more than you are willing to admit. Perhaps you don't like what you've found out, perhaps that's why you've come here. It doesn't matter. We're all due for a reckoning anyway."

And he continued on. Gradually, the darkness gave way to the slit metal patterns of the grates ago. They ran in a straight line, for the most part, but Larxene could spot some deviations in the pattern up ahead.

Larxene turned over what she'd learned in her head. He knew about _X_ -Corp, which indicated that the Wind Makers knew about _X_ -Corp, and presumably had even before they'd run afoul of Axel and his Skeleton Key. The blond girl in the hospital gown was caught up in _X_ -Corp somehow. Given what little she'd learned from Vexen, it wasn't difficult to imagine what had happened to her at that place was nothing good.

That didn't explain why Axel and his new sidekick had gone to that hunting lodge in the first place. The cutthroat lackey (as Big Duster Guy had conveniently dubbed her) had given no indication either of the men involved in that operation were involved in anything outside of organized crime.

Which would imply that _X_ -Corp was caught up in organized crime, which...

Which would make a hell of a lot of...

There was a scream from up above them as something landing on the grate right over their heads, shaking the metal on its moorings. Larxene's partner put his bad hand out, as if to hold Larxene in place.

Larxene could make out the grungy white dress, the blond hair falling over the grate... It was her, stunned and apparently unconscious. Next to her, his face was set like stone.

Larxene could hear the other girl, Selphie's voice from up above, "Oh shit, oh God, oh _fuck_!"

There was a crash, a bang. Larxene recognized the sound of splintering wood, "He's inside," Larxene breathed, moving at once for the latch, but he restrained her.

"What the hell?" she demanded.

Selphie was speaking, loudly, "Yo, Dracula! Looking for virgins?"

"Is she _stupid_?"

"It would appear that way." he reached up, did some quick work with his fingers, and unlatching the grate. In the next second, he'd grabbed the unconscious girl by her arm and, easily as if she were a pillow, had collected her in one arm, dropping her down below to lie beside Larxene.

"Watch her."

"Bullshit, he's about to _kill_ somebody..."

"And he will, if you keep arguing with me. Stay put."

Larxene didn't argue, and he lifted himself out through the hatch, shotgun in hand. He closed the grate behind him, presumably so that thing wouldn't have a bright red arrow pointing to where they were hiding. How nice.

Selphie was still trying it, bless her heart, "Well, contrary to what you may have heard, here's one, standing right in front of you!"

Larxene scoffed despite herself, "Little badass, huh?" she turned to the other girl, her still wan, face, "I guess you're the sensible one."

No response of course.

"What're you waiting for? I've had all my shots."

Larxene found it hard to look away from the girl's face. It was a pretty face, very innocent. Younger looking than the rest of her, but maybe that was just because she almost appeared to be sleeping.

"I got both badass _and_ sensible crossed off back in the day," she continued, more to keep herself from freaking out than anything, "We already _had_ a badass and a sensible one. Or, at least, they _thought_ that's what they were."

But the thought of Saix, then the broken, bloody figure lying on the cobblestones, proved too much, so she changed courses, "And...and my brother was basically hopeless, so...somebody had to straddle the line."

She looked at her, that wave of blond hair, inexplicably neat, considering, swept over her shoulder. The notes Vexen had showed her...about the Skeleton Key. Could it be that this girl...

She felt her hand reaching out, just to push the hair aside, get a glimpse at the back of the neck...

A gunshot, "Girl, you _are_ nuts!" Kinneas's voice.

"Irvine, you idiot!"

"Nice thing to say to the dude who saved your life."

"It was a _heroic sacrifice_ , he was going to kill..."

"Move!" the big guy's voice, intervening. The sound of a gun being cocked...

"Get those kids out of here!" the cop's voice, the woman, Tifa. When the hell had _she_ shown...

"Watch out!"

A whoosh of air, a scream...

Larxene decided she couldn't sit here waiting anymore. Screw that. She'd come this far, she wasn't about to have it said she spent this pivotal moment crouching in some crawlspace like some terrified...

"Kid?" she turned her head, looked beside her. The girl was gone. And the hatch right next to the one they were under was being opened. Larxene had just enough time to see those skinny legs clambering out. She moved forward, tried to grab her ankle...

"Wait, wait, no, don't do..."

" _NO_!"

* * *

He'd been shot at before. He'd been _shot_ before, even. But those had been nothing, barely pinpricks, compared to this.

It was a blinding pain, searing. He couldn't seen a thing, could barely even feel it when the ground rushed up to meet him.

His every reflex was dulled...beyond the mere _fact_ of the pain over every part of him, it was damned hard to figure out what he was feeling. With slow, trembling hands, he felt his chest, the red hot blood that was slowly, but very surely, leaking out over his shirt...

 _Almost center mass, smack against the heart,_ he thought with ill-disguised amazement, _Damn good shot for a rook..._

And then the _other_ pain. The familiar pain: like a thousand volts being pumped through him at the same time, every part of him burning.

 _Guess we figured out where Luxord's little timepiece is_.

He hadn't considered the thing was pressure sensitive. Whether or not that counted as a design flaw or a bonus was probably best left up to the Underworld's engineers. He couldn't think about it, he could barely _feel_ anything.

The ringing of church bells...fading into silence. Maybe it was all silent now. Maybe he was dying...

But no...there were voices. They were still talking. They were still alive. Urgent, quick, curt. He could hear Tifa...

"Run."

She better not have been telling him. She'd probably have gotten a laugh out of it, though, wondered why he didn't laugh a swell.

" _Get out of here_!"

More gunfire, confused footsteps, people running. Where was Saix? Squall didn't think he made out his voice.

What was it Tifa had said, back in the car?

" _Whatever he's doing, whyever he's doing it...he deserves a chance to explain himself before we get the mob on him._ "

Explain himself...crazy, lovestruck kid, why hadn't he seen it? Shouldn't he have _known_ better? Stupid, stuck-up, emotionally disaffected bastard. He should have seen it. He should've understood it.

Too late now. Again.

Tifa's voice, "Step away from him. It's not him you want."

Who was she talking to? Saix? Why wasn't he talking back? Come on, come on...open your goddamn...

He forced his eyes open...in time to see a living Shadow, marked only by a pillar of unnaturally silver hair, standing above some prone body on the floor...

A _blue_ body.

He tried to sit up, tried to move forward, but the pain hadn't faded, not in the slightest. He reeled back with a gasp...

"Hey, hey, hold up!" a pair of hands on his shoulders, holding him down. Squall nearly lashed out, but the face gradually came into focus... Messy black hair, blue eyes...

 _The brother._

"You shouldn't move, man. You've been shot."

Squall could only stare at him, his breath short, ragged.

"I mean...yeah, I guess that's obvious, but..."

Another shot, the sound of a bullet pinging on metal. Zack whirled around, "Fucking Irvine, what the hell is he..."

"Zack!" and here was Tifa, dropping to her knees beside him, "Zack, what are you..."

And suddenly he was all sheepish, shy, the picture of a little kid, "I...I was just trying to...he's been shot, I thought I could..."

"You leave that to me, kiddo," a soft voice, but rushed all the same, and strained. Was that a hint of tears in her voice? He couldn't see clearly enough to make out...

"You get out of here. Find your friends, and _hide_. I'll move him."

"But..."

"Remember how many times I pinned Cloud flat to the mat? Daintiness is deceiving."

"But Tifa..."

"Aw, shit," the cocking of a gun, Tifa fired two shots and, at once, changed her tune, "You take one side, I take the other. _Capiche_?"

"Huh?"

" _Got it?_ "

And, to demonstrate, Zack took Squall's left arm and draped it around his shoulder. Squall wished he could say he had the sensation to feel uncomfortable, but he didn't, which was an entirely different shade of worrisome.

"Alright," and Tifa took his right arm around _her_ shoulder, Squall feeling himself be hauled unsteadily to his feet. He let out a weak groan, trying to force his vision back into focus, but no good.

"We're getting you out of here, Squall," Tifa told him, "But you've gotta cooperate for a change."

"S..." he broke off, "Screw you, Lockhart."

"Ah, good, we haven't lost him. Zack, this way."

They started moving, though Squall couldn't figure out which direction.

This was a slow, laborious process. Squall tried to hasten it, but he found that his legs were stiff as planks and heavy as lead. He could feel blood over his front, seeping into and then back _through_ his shirt.

This wasn't good. He wasn't an idiot. This would probably be bad if he _didn't_ have a self-destruct switch sewn into his chest cavity. They ought to leave him. There were more important things. This whole place was crawling with kids, and not very intelligent kids, if Squall's limited exposure to them meant anything. Not to mention...

"He's right behind us!" Zack, his voice right in his ear.

"Aw, shi..." but Tifa stopped short, " _Watch it!_ "

"Zack!" the girl, Selphie Tilmitt,17 years old, 5719 Audley Street. They must have come across her.

Zack panted out the words, "Right behind us!"

There was movement, the cocking of a rifle, but Tifa put a stop to...whatever that was, "No! Just go!"

"But I've got him!" the drug dealer, Irvine Kinneas.

Zack lost his temper at this point, shrieking almost hysterically, "Irvine, for once in your life, _listen_!"

It must have worked, because they were moving at a faster clip, "Smart friends you've got there," Tifa remarked.

"Would you believe I'm the dumb one?" a dry, frightened chuckle.

"We cant follow them," said Tifa, "Best to split, confuse him..."

"Who _is_ he?" demanded Zack.

This time, Squall forced his eyes to stay open, flickering Tifa's way. He could see her, brow wet with sweat, her eyes downcast, lips twitching.

But she finally said, "Here, up ahead."

Down a short flight of stairs (which Squall's numbed legs did _not_ appreciate in the slightest), around a corner. He felt his head turn sharply as they rounded the bend...he got a glimpse at the street behind him...

And he saw him. It.

Tall, thin, black boots, black...coat? Duster? Maybe a cape. That silver hair, that sword...

His heart erupted yet again and, this time, Squall knew it had nothing to do with a bullet.

"Shit!" Zack cried out, as Squall reeled against him, biting back a scream, "Hell, what's _wrong_ with him?"

 _Wants me to catch it_ now _?_ Squall thought ruefully, _Not exactly in the best trim for it? What, does this count as running_ away _in their fucked up rulebook?_

There was the creak of an old door opening, following by the musty scent of old air.

"Just set him down wherever," Tifa said, as if he were just a sack of potatoes, "Come on, help me with this door."

Squall felt himself being lowered to a dusty wood floor. He felt his body shaking. It was true that the jolts got worse and worse each time. What was this...five? Counting the one right after he'd been shot. Six. Almost halfway there.

Seifer would feel them too, probably, wherever he was. Not fair. He'd been shot, he hadn't broken any rules...

But, of course, nothing about any of this was _fair_. Who was he kidding?

Slowly, things began to come into focus again. Peeling plaster walls, rusty tin ceiling, tiles worked in fancy designs...vines, flowers. Some of them were missing. It was a tiny, poky place. Probably a shop once.

Tifa and Zack were barricading the door, moving chairs, tables, even a narrow, empty bookcase over to block the way in...and out.

"That oughta do it," said Tifa at last, "You guys should be safe."

"Wait...us guys?"

"You're staying with him until I get back."

"You're gonna go out there alone?"

"Well, I'm sure as hell not gonna face the sword-wielding maniac with a high school kid and a medical emergency."

Squall's fingers twitched, very briefly, into an approximation of a rude gesture that, on second thought, it was probably best he never got the chance to make.

"But my friends..."

"I'm gonna get them back," she assured him, "But I need someone to watch Squall."

"Tifa..."

"Just keep pressure on that wound for me," a rustling of fabric, "Take this. You do football, right?"

"Um...yes?"

"So you're good to rip that into ribbons. Don't try to be fancy, fancy is bad."

"A-alright."

"You can do this. Listen, you got this far."

"But Tifa, I...about why..."

"Oh, believe me, we are gonna have a _very_ long talk about why you and your merry band ended up wandering into a biker den."

"Wait... _that's_ what this is?"

"A very long talk," she decided. There was a brief pause, and then something that Squall believed might be a hug, Zack letting out a surprised gasp.

"After I go, you let nobody through this door unless they knock three times. Got it?"

"Um..."

" _Got it?_ "

"Yeah."

"Good. It's gonna be okay, Breezy."

A noise of a table being moved out of the way, the creak of the door shutting. She was gone.

Squall heard Zack let out a mammoth sigh, and then the groaning that must be him pushing whatever hunk of furniture they'd moved back in front of the door.

Squall was able to manage the energy to say something at last, "B- _Breezy_?"

In the shadows, he could make out Zack turning back to him, smiling sheepishly, "She's called me that since I was a kid. I know, it's stupid..."

Squall scoffed, and instantly regretted it, wincing, "She...she calls me _Squally_."

"Huh," Zack laughed, "Okay, that's worse."

"Well, I mean...it's like a kind of wind."

"Really? Oh, uh...okay, sorry, I didn't mean to say stup..."

"It's fine."

A very long silence. Squall forced himself to say, "Didn't she give you instructions?"

"Oh? Oh, yeah! Shit. Sorry."

"Forget about it."

"What?"

"No, don't forget about the bullet, forget about being..." he sighed heavily, "I guess you've never done anything like this before?"

"Bandaged up a bullet wound?" he sighed, "Is it obvious?"

"I'll talk you through it."

"Oh...okay. Thanks," and he started fussing with Squall's shirt, fingers fumbling over the buttons, "Er...you're...uh...you're burning up, man."

"I've noticed."

Zack sighed, getting the shirt open eventually. Judging by the expression on his face, there was nothing pretty to see.

"Oh jeez..." his eyes got all buggy, his face waxy, greenish.

"Zack..."

"Aw, man..."

"Zack..."

"Shit..."

" _Breezy!_ "

He looked up sharply, "I'm...I'm sorry."

"S'okay, just...just bind the wound. Same as you'd bind up a sprain after a practice."

Zack chuckled dryly, as if at some private joke. He began using the strips, presumably from Tifa's jacket, tying them one by one around Squall's midsection. He gritted his teeth, holding by a cry.

More than once, he saw Zack's eyes go further up his chest than the bullet wound. There was a concern there, a consternation. Maybe even a fear.

Why not? It was a pretty freaky scar.

"You're doing okay?" Squall asked him at one point.

"Oh? Um...yeah, sure, I guess," he looked at him, "You? Wait, sorry. That's stupid."

But Squall answered anyway, "I'm not dead."

By the time Zack was finished, the pain had subsided to a dull, steady burning, which Squall knew was anything but good, but at least it was easier to remove.

"So...what next?" Zack asked, rocking back on the balls of his feet, looking proud of his work.

"Well...next, the bleeding slows and then we work on getting the bullet out."

Zack's face fell, "What?"

"Blood poisoning's a bitch."

"...shit."

"It's fine," Squall told him, knowing it was far from that, "Tifa'll be back. And she'll have your friends with her."

"Tifa..." Zack sighed.

"You know her?" Squall asked, already knowing the answer, and getting more or less what Tifa had already told him as an answer.

"She...er...she and my brother go way back. They were, like...best friends."

"Your brother..." Squall nodded haltingly, "Cloud."

"Yeah..." Zack bit his lip, "Cloud."

A long silence before Zack asked, "Is that why you guys were up here? Looking for him?"

Squall shook his head, "Different case."

"They keep you busy."

"They do," Squall almost smiled, but it was difficult.

"...you care about your brother?" asked Squall eventually, "I mean...I know you said..."

"He's my brother," said Zack simply, "He always looked out for me, took care of me... Kept other kids from pushing me around. Big brother stuff, you know?"

Squall almost laughed, "Yeah...yeah, I know."

"...we were all pretty torn up when he left. My mom cried for days after. Tifa stopped visiting our place, stopped calling too. At first we thought it was just too hard, but..." he sighed, "My Mom's got her own ideas about that,"

There was a bit of red in his cheeks, which told Squall all he needed to know about what Mrs. Strife/Fair thought.

"I didn't want to believe he killed Aerith," Zack said heavily, "I mean...I was a kid when they were together, but...they loved each other, man," he turned to Squall, "And...you could _tell_ , looking at them. He was a different person around her. No matter what happens, that...that kinda thing doesn't change, does it?"

Squall thought of a prone body on a stretcher, a yellow feather placed over the breast... His fingers twitched.

"People change, kid. It's not easy, and it takes a lot, but..."

"A lot," Zack repeated, "I guess you get that."

Squall couldn't help but do a double take, "What makes you say that?"

"Oh? I...I'm sorry, I shouldn't have..."

"Forget that. Why do you say it?"

"Your...your partner, I guess. The guy on the roof."

Squall nodded, "He's...complicated."

"You were his friend?"

"I don't..." he stopped himself, " _He_ didn't have a lot of friends."

"You seemed to know a bit about him. He wasn't always..."

"He wasn't. Things happen to everybody. And some things...really bad things. They change people."

Zack nodded slowly, "I believe that. It's scary, but I believe it. When I...when I saw Aerith there, on my wall..." he stopped, choked up, "Like a piece of meat. Part of me knew there was just one answer, and the other part...that part couldn't believe it. But...but you said something to me then..."

"You remember that?"

"Dude, it was, like, three days ago."

"Shit..." Squall closed his eyes, "Hell of a three days."

Zack shrugged, "Well, you said..." and then, in a ridiculously bad approximation of Squall's voice that he felt he should be offended by if he had the energy for it, " _Hell, you probably_ did _think you were doing a good thing. If it had been me where you were_..."

And Squall found himself joining his words to Zack's, " _God help me, I would've done the same thing._ "

Squall looked at him, "Good memory."

Zack shrugged, "I felt a bit better after that. I know that's stupid, but...well, I figured I could trust you."

"That could go both ways, not gonna lie."

"Well...I think I was right to trust you."

"Thanks for that..."

"That's why I left Mr. Thatch's letter with you,"

Squall nearly killed himself, he sat up so quickly, getting Zack to go all, "Whoa, whoa, watch out!" steadying him.

"The...the _letter_?" he repeated, incredulous.

Zack frowned, "...yes?"

"The coded letter. The one about...about the kidnapped journalist and the murder Cloud committed and..."

"We overheard Mr. Thatch telling Sora's Mom about it in the hospital, they knew we overheard..." he sighed, "I picked his pocket when we were all standing around in my place, freaking out, before you showed up."

"You could've just told me about it."

"And admit I stole it?" Zack almost smiled, "I just knew...I knew that us...Selphie, Tidus and I, and Thatch and Sora's Mom. We mean well. We're all...well, we're all good people. But I knew that we weren't gonna get anything done chasing our own tails, and I knew...I knew something had to be done."

"The letter said not to tell the cops. Warned about it."

Zack nodded, "I saw that. But here's the thing... You haven't told anybody else about the letter, have you?"

Squall thought of Seifer and, again, repressed a sardonic laugh, "Not another cop."

"Then I was right to trust you. I figured...you'd do the right thing."

"The right thing?"

Zack shrugged, "I feel like an idiot."

Squall didn't wait a second before debasing that, "No. Not an idiot. It's...it's hard, not trusting your friends, isn't it? Feeling stuck?"

Zack laughed bitterly, "I think if I'd thought about it a bit, I wouldn't have done it, but...well, like I said, I...I had to tell myself what Cloud had done, that this was serious, that...that he killed somebody. And that if we just listened to him and never told anybody, more people could die, and..."

And Squall put his hand on Zack's arm, getting him to hush at once, "Zack."

"Y-yeah?"

"You did the right thing."

Zack turned away, a shine in his eyes. Squall debated whether or not to say this next bit, but, eventually, he could resist no longer...

"And let me tell you, right now... I've seen enough crazy shit in this place tonight to be _convinced_ that your brother didn't kill that girl."

Zack turned back to him sharply, "W-what? Wait, you don't mean..."

Squall didn't break eye contact with him. The color drained from Zack's face, "So...so that...that _guy_ outside...?"

Squall nodded and, almost immediately, felt his body wracked by yet another burning, blistering bout. He screamed aloud, clawing wildly at the dusty, moldering floor.

"Squall?" Zack asked, "Squall, holy crap, man, are you..."

He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, convulsing raggedly, disoriented. For a second, Zack wasn't even _Zack_ looking at him. But someone else. Someone smaller, slighter, dark hair in tiny girlish pigtails, bending over him, asking him if he was alright, if he'd been hurt any worse, that he shouldn't have come between them...

"I'm...I'm fine," Squall told him.

Zack nodded, "Okay."

A short silence, "How do you know?"

"What?"

"That...that Cloud isn't the..."

Squall eyed him, "Would you believe I listened to my heart?"

Zack stared at him. Squall stared back. Slowly, a smile began to spread across Zack's face...

And then the ground shook beneath them, dust raining down from the ceiling, bits of tin clattering down to the floor around them as, clearly as a siren, a single cry echoed over to them...

" _NO!_ "

* * *

Everything was hazy, _had_ been hazy. Haziness was familiar. It felt, really, like that had been all she'd ever known, at least until very recently.

And now, haziness again. What had happened to her, what was happening around her, all some wild, confused blur, very picky about when it decided to focus.

She remembered things...odd, disjointed. Was that why she'd fainted? Recognition? It had been a terrible feeling... The sight of the shadow looming over them, standing above them, tall and imposing...

Pure, concentrated fear. If anybody could actually _radiate_ terror, it must be that thing.

All of it...screams, gunfire...her friends (they were _her_ friends, right? Sometimes, she felt she knew them, and other times, it was like she was being led on by a pack of oddly assorted strangers) crying to each other, running one way and then the other...

 _He_ had picked her up, slung her over his shoulder as if it were nothing. He seemed familiar too, if not the same. Nothing seemed the same.

Her mother hadn't been the same. But she couldn't, mustn't think of her mother, think of the hospital, think of _It_ standing above her in the dark, those cold, dead eyes boring into her soul, the old woman's blood dripping from that wickedly sharp blade he carried...

Why did she remember _that_ so well, when so much else eluded her? Yet she could remember every detail of her mother's death, screaming, crying...

" _Not her! You won't take her, not now, not ever again!_ "

Her body had fallen over the bed, slumped over the side. She remembered everything, _everything_...

But he _had_ left her. As if it were nothing, as if _she_ were nothing. Moments before others had arrived on the scene.

But no matter, because he was back. And he was back for her.

She'd told her as much, hadn't she? Selphie, Selphie who was trying so hard to be her friend. She couldn't remember why. She could remember so little...

Shuttered up in the big building with its windows, its rafters, leaning against the door, only to find the point of that blade poking through it, fit to skewer them both.

She'd fainted again. Useless idiot she was, she fainted. What was the point of even _being_ here if she could never do anything about any of it?

But he'd found her again, pulled her down, someplace even darker. Some other woman had been there. Great. Another new face she had no hope of recognizing.

"Watch her," he gave his orders, curt, clean and matter-of-fact as ever, but there was a special kind of weariness to them now.

She protested, whoever she was, "Bullshit, he's about to _kill_ somebody..."

"And he will, if you keep arguing with me. Stay put."

And he was gone. Another friendly face back in the dark, back with that horrible, twisted, _cold_ shadow... To protect her. All of them just wanted to protect her...

Well...except one.

" _What? You're scared?_ "

" _It's not about being_ scared _,_ " she told him as primly as she ought, " _I just think it's stupid._ "

" _You_ are _scared!_ "

" _And you're suicidal._ "

" _That means you think it's dangerous._ "

" _It is! You heard my Dad..._ "

" _So you're scared?_ "

" _You can recognize something is dangerous without being scared of it._ "

" _Nami..._ "

He'd only ever wanted to _be_ with her. And she'd let him, any day, any time, for anything. No matter how stupid, dangerous or scary... He got his way in the end. She couldn't say no.

"I guess you're the sensible one," the present now. The present was the important thing, the past was gone, and dead, and this was the _worst_ time to be remembering it... Why couldn't she remember anything nice, just once, just one more time...

"I got both badass _and_ sensible crossed off back in the day," she kept on talking, "We already _had_ a badass and a sensible one. Or, at least, they _thought_ that's what they were. And...and my brother was basically hopeless, so...somebody had to straddle the line."

It had been a big door, deep in the bowels of the building. That lab was off limits, it couldn't _possibly_ have been left unlocked? Xem found a way. He always found a way.

" _Just one peek, that's it._ "

" _And what do we get out of this?_ "

" _Something_ fun _. Or else you spend the rest of the summer doodling._ "

" _Drawing. I_ draw _._ "

" _I'm with you,_ " his hand, lightly nudging her in the side, " _Anything happens, I'll protect you._ "

" _Who says_ I _won't protect_ you _?_ "

A bang. Gunshot. More voices from up above, confused arguing, Selphie among them...

"Girl, you _are_ nuts!"

"Irvine, you idiot!"

"Nice thing to say to the dude who saved your life."

"It was a _heroic sacrifice_ , he was going to kill..."

Sacrifice, sacrifice, everybody playing at sacrificing themselves, sacrificing others...

It was no small thing. No small thing, nothing to be taken lightly, nobody should _have_ to do it...

" _Second thoughts?_ "

"Now, _you're asking me?_ "

" _Just as a matter of courtesy._ "

" _Such a gentleman...After you._ "

His hand on the latch, turning the door, opening it...

"Move!" Auron. That was his name! Auron, her savior, her protector, with his sternness, rare smiles, all the more precious for their rarity... He was up there, facing it...

"Get those kids out of here!" somebody else, a woman, she didn't recognize her. It was no matter...

She had to help them. No more hiding, no more ducking, no more fainting, no more fear, no more _sacrifices_...

She lifted the grate, reemerged in the enormous room. The policewoman and Auron both had their guns out, each aiming at it, the other boy was in the rafters, holding that rifle...

And there was Selphie, backed up against the wall, a prisoner, at _It's_ mercy.

" _He does look kind of like him, doesn't he?_ "

" _I don't see it._ "

" _What?_ "

" _I'd say he looks more like_ you _._ "

And he'd turned to her, grinned. She'd made him laugh! That was always a rare victory, he was usually the one making her smile...

That grin, that brief second's distraction was all _it_ needed...

They should be dead. Wasn't _she_ dead? It had borne down on her then, and again, in that hospital bed... She'd been saved twice. Two women. Two mothers...

Selphie was there now, up against the wall, nowhere to move, and _It_ coming down upon her.

No more sacrifices.

With all the energy she possessed, Namine stood there, hands clenched into fists at her sides, and screamed, from the bottom of her heart, " _NO!_ "

She didn't know what happened next, could barely understand it. Maybe she was dead again. Maybe they were all dead.

Maybe the world had ended. She knew nothing anymore.

But, if a sacrifice had to be made, at least _she_ had been the one to make it.

* * *

 **A/N:** And on that tantalizing note, I leave you for...another two weeks. With the holiday coming up, I'm not sure I'll have time to upload Chapter 37 right after Thanksgiving. But I hope to have it up the next Friday.

See you then...


	37. Fireside Chats

Chapter 37, Fireside Chats

 **A/N:** A couple of days late (apologies), but here is Chapter 37, as promised! One of my favorite scenes so far falls in this one. I am by now assuming that, if you've stuck with _Radiant Creatures_ this long, you won't balk at some of my crazier ideas.

* * *

"And...and _this_ one," Roxas pointed to a rough patch on his elbow, "I got this one wiping out on a tailpipe..."

"What kinda tailpipe?" Axel asked, impressed.

Roxas shrugged, "Big staircase...forgot where," he was smiling as he said it, though. Really smiling. He'd been doing that more and more all day, as if all four of them almost splattering down into the snow had given him a new lease on life.

"And this one," lifted up the leg of his cargo pants, showing off a nasty bruise on his thigh.

"Another wipe out?" Axel guessed.

"Nope," he shook his head, "Did a whole 180 off a _roof_...landing was a bit rough, but I landed it."

"No shit?"

Roxas shook his head, looking delighted.

"Shit, I knew I should've gone in for the skate scene," said Axel, "Less hazardous than the biking thing."

"Ha-ha, shut up," said Seifer dryly, budging for the first time since the sun had gown down from the window he'd been leaning against. They'd improvised a way to balance the cable car, Axel and Roxas sitting on one side, Seifer and Tidus on the other. This, at least, kept the motion sickness down and, hopefully, would prevent any further accidents.

"You got any scars?" Roxas was asking him.

"Huh?"

"Scars?"

Axel shrugged, "Yeah, I've got some. Nowhere you'd wanna see."

"Huh..."

"For Gods sake, don't push it," said Tidus aggrievedly, "You get naked, I'm jumping out myself."

"Bet that's just what Elsa wants," said Axel, "She always had a fucked up sense of humor."

"Didn't stop _you_ from humoring her," pointed out Seifer.

"That was a youthful indiscretion," snarled Axel.

"There's youthful insurrections and then there's..."

"Kidnapping a bunch of girls for a faceless megacorp?"

Seifer flipped him the bird and resumed sulking. Axel turned back to Roxas, who was rolling back his other sleeve, "Then this one...this is my favorite scar."

"You've got a favorite?"

"Yeah," he nodded, "I mean...I just _remembered_ I had it, but...I do. See?"

A faded, distorted shape, jagged at one hand, sort of two pronged at the other.

"Remind you of something?" Roxas prompted.

Tidus interjected, leaning forward, "Is it a penis?"

Roxas glowered at him, "It's a _heart_! Like, it's sideways, but it's...it's a heart, see?"

Tidus shrugged, "I guess?"

"It's a heart, Rox," Axel assured him (though to him it looked more like a fucked up pair of scissors), "Even better, it's on your sleeve!"

Roxas blinked, "That's a figure of..."

"Figure of speech, right," he grinned easily, "So...what's that one's story?"

Roxas shrugged, "It's weird...my friends and I, we were gonna skate this crazy ramp...I can't remember where, but it was big. Steep. All four of us..." he chuckled, "We all wiped out. It was crazy. We were all banged up and..." he bit his lip, "We've all got different scars out of it."

Given Roxas had only been communicating in proper conversations for roughly 24 hours, this was the most Axel had ever learned about where he'd come from, as fragmented and hazy as it was.

"Four of you?" he said at last.

Roxas nodded, "Yep. Four."

"Imagine that..." Axel bit his lip wryly, looking out the window, at the outline of the mountains in the distance, the big shadowy depression of the valley far below.

Magic number, must have been fate. Axel wondered how Roxas fit in with the rest of them... If he'd been the sprightly little tag along kid who everybody pretended to resent, but they were all really attached to. He didn't seem much like the faux leader, presiding over them with a load of unearned authority masked as ass-kicking. Maybe the quiet, bookish one who rolled his eyes whenever they came up with something wild and stupid to do, but did it anyway...

Or maybe, just maybe, he'd been the crazy one, with the grins and the jokes, never taking anything seriously, determined to be a kid forever, even when everybody else started showing an interest in growing up...

"The thing about it..." Roxas was saying, "The scar kinda reminds me of 'em, you know? Like you look at it, you remember exactly how you got it. I guess all scars are like that..."

"They could be," Axel agreed, his fingers going impulsively to the sunburst on his own wrist.

"It's like you're connected to them," Roxas had taken on a faraway, dreamy quality, looking off into the distance, this tiny, sad little smile playing on his lips.

"What were they like?" Axel asked, "Your friends?"

Roxas turned to him, and it was some time before he answered, "You know...I can't really remember."

Axel looked at him for a while, wondering what to say to that. Finally, he said, "It'll come back to ya, Roxas. Everything else is."

"Yeah..." he nodded, not very convinced, "Yeah, sure. You're probably right."

He lowered his head, as if suddenly tired. Axel got a glimpse of that _other_ scar, the _X_ on the back of his neck. Similar to Seifer's, but so much smaller. And Seifer had hastily shut down any discussion of it...

He wondered what was the story behind _Roxas_ 's _X_. Given where Axel had found him, the meaning seemed very clear. But did Roxas remember? Something told Axel he wouldn't be as fond of the story if he did.

Those papers probably explained a bit about it, the ones from the Hunting House, the ones the Ice Queen had so carefully decided to keep for herself.

They shouldn't have stalled, should've looked them over the second they'd gotten their hands on them. What had he been thinking...

"Look, guys, this is nice and all..." began Tidus.

"Oh, here we go," Seifer rolled his eyes.

"...but shouldn't we be, I dunno, figuring out a way out of this frigging tin can?"

Axel heaved an exasperated sigh, "I'm assuming this means you have an actual _idea_ this time, or do you just miss hearing Seifer get confused?"

"I _wasn't_ confused, I was trying to get things clarified..."

"Kid..."

"Fuck that 'kid' stuff, you're, what, 20?"

"...21."

"Yeah, you're three years older than me."

"Young in body, wise in..."

"I'm the _only_ one trying to figure a way out of this place!"

"And I'm telling _you_ , that's nice and all, but there ain't a lot of point," Axel spread his arms wide, "We're locked in this here tin can, about a bajillion miles above the ground and er...half a bajillion away from the top of the mountain, suspended by two...count 'em, two..." he held up two fingers just to spell it out, "wires."

"They call 'em cables," said Seifer.

"Don't get pedantic, Seifer."

"Look, I get it, I kidnapped those girls, but I didn't never pedant any..."

Axel stared at him, "Dude, _pedantic_. It means, like..."

"To explain a lot to somebody," interjected Roxas.

They all looked at him, Axel clapping him on the shoulder, "Atta boy, Brainiac."

"Outsmarted by a vegetable," grumbled Seifer.

"I'm not a vegetable!" said Roxas, sounding more annoyed than angry.

"Ex-vegetable."

Roxas just shrugged at that one, as if he couldn't find the lie. Tidus groaned, getting to his feet, "You guys are telling me you're cool with just sitting around and bullshitting until the crazy bitch on the mountain decides to let us go?"

"Well, I'm not saying I'm _happy_ about it..." began Axel, "But we don't exactly have a lot of options here..."

"We _make_ options!" Tidus got to his feet so quickly he nearly hit his head against the ceiling.

"Aw, Jesus..." Seifer sighed.

"Listen, we're on a slant, right? Like, a diagonal?"

"I don't know, man. Rox, you got a protractor..."

"Wait..." said Roxas, "Yeah," he turned to Tidus, "Yeah, we _are_ on a slant! And...and the cable's gotta come down someplace..."

"Exactly," said Tidus, looking both impressed and gratified, "So..."

"Like a zip cord," Roxas nodded, "That's kinda sweet."

"Your word, not mine."

"Wait, wait, wait..." Axel interjected, "You're not _seriously_ suggesting we get out onto the cable and _slide_ down?"

"Why not?"

"I can tell you a coupla damn reasons why not!" said Axel, aghast, "What part of a bajillion miles down..."

"It's probably more like 2 and half," said Roxas, "I mean, it's a long way..."

"Skater boy can do math too," remarked Seifer.

"Roxas, two miles is still a lot..."

"I know!" he said, "But it's _doable_. You hold on tight, you don't look down..."

"You know, I'm starting to like this kid," said Tidus.

"Oh, so _I'm_ a kid?" Roxas turned to Tidus, "Funny how that works."

Tidus smiled, abashed, "Sorry. But, yeah, we can do it..."

"Roxas, this isn't like...jumping off a roof into a dumpster," pointed out Axel.

"What?" asked Seifer. Axel ignored him.

"Why not?" asked Roxas, "Axel, c'mon...I used to do stuff like this all the time!"

"Stuff that you're just remembering?"

"Yeah...but I _know_ I did it. Sure, nothing...nothing this _big_ , but..." he sighed, "Don't you trust me?"

"Rox, it's not..." but Axel broke off, "It's not about trust, man..."

But he couldn't bring himself to finish. Tidus was already crossing the car, heaving the door open and letting in a harsh, cold blast of air. Seifer let out a short cry, "Aw, for the love of... _Aw, Jesus nuts_!"

And he lurched forward, onto all fours, his face contorted into another terrible expression of pain. They all whirled around to look at him, Tidus freezing in the doorway.

"Seifer..." Axel moved over to him, "Seifer, man, you okay..."

"Do I _look_ fucking... _argh_!" Again, he seized up, shaking, spasming wildly.

"What the fuck's wrong with him?" asked Tidus.

"You're asking me?"

"What..." Seifer broke off, panting, "What the hell is he do..." but he broke off again.

"He? Who's he?" asked Tidus.

"Forget it," said Axel, "We're not getting an answer. Let me..." he moved closer to Seifer, who responded in kind by putting both hands out, " _Back off_!"

"Man, I'm trying to help you!"

"Nothing..." he rasped, breath uneven, "Nothing you can do."

"That's what you said before, I didn't buy it then and, guess what? I buy it even less now."

"Well, it's a good thing I ain't selling you shit! Now, leave it, Axel..."

"It's that scar, isn't it? The _X_ on your chest?"

Seifer broke off, "Shut up, man."

"It is, isn't it? They didn't something to you too..."

Seifer looked up at him, " _They_?"

"They, them, _X-_ Corp, they did something..."

Seifer broke off, "What the _hell_ do you have to do with..."

"Um...guys?" Tidus broke in. He'd returned to the doorway, was peering out. Roxas had joined him, and both were looking out of the car at...something down below.

At first, it seemed as though some sort of scream, an actual human scream had resounded from somewhere below them. Seifer got shakily to his feet, eyes wide, mouth agape, jostling the car as he did. Roxas stiffened, going pale. Axel felt his hand on his arm. Tidus gripped tightly to the edge of the doorway, his eyes wide... There was something reflected in them, Axel noticed, a flicker, some bright light, gradually spreading...

In the next second, Axel realized where the light was coming from...a growing tide, pure white glow, coming up from the valley, bringing with it this weird warmth, and a sharp wind. Axel felt the car pitch sharply beneath his feet...

He reached forward, grabbing for Tidus's leg, meaning to pull him back inside before...

There was a crash, a clear, sharp snapping noise, Axel felt the wind whistling in his ears, that warm light at his back...

"Axel!" he heard Roxas's voice, saw fingers grasping wildly for his hand...

Again, he grabbed for the door, still hanging open. He could see Roxas pitching forward, making to catch him. There was no way he'd make it, not without falling out himself...

"Roxas!" and he swung the door shut, just before Roxas could reach out for him.

The last thing he saw were those scared, blue eyes, pressed up against the glass panel, as the car went swinging back one way and Axel went swinging back another.

 _He's okay, though,_ he thought to himself, _Better off than you._

Make that _one_ kid he'd looked after.

* * *

"Donald, I'm gonna say something you're not gonna wanna hear..."

"Then save it!"

"...I think we lost him."

Donald put on the brakes so hard Celeste, yet again, had to catch herself to keep from being flung in between the driver's and passenger's seats.

"Then what would you suggest I do, Bigshot?"

"Well, just that it's gotten pretty dark out, and I'm sure they're missing us back in town, what with everything that's happened..."

"We were brought here to solve a crime, not lead a damn prayer circle! They can hem and haw over their dead gasbag all they like, but if we don't catch this son of a snake, he won't be the only one dead!"

"He's on a motorcycle," Celeste interjected, having a very good idea Donald would find her even less convincing than his partner, but figuring she might as well try it anyway, "We knocked him flat off the road and he was barely slowed down..."

" _You_ didn't do anything! _I_ drove the car, Goofy aimed the shot, _not very well_ , I might add..."

"Well, Donald, if she hadn't pulled me back into the car, I don't like to think what would've happened..."

"I don't know what the hell I was thinking let a civilian carpool during a car chase!"

"What happened to buying me a beer when this was all over?"

He screamed again, slamming tiny hands down onto the windshield. Goofy heaved a great sigh, rummaging around in the glove compartment.

"Want a Smartie?" he had in his hand a little pile of the tiny, chalky candy tablets.

It occurred to Celeste that she hadn't had a bite to eat since her own sorry tuna salad sandwiches at the hospital last night, right before the blackout, before Amphitrite...

Not that a Smartie counted even as a modicum of food, but she accepted it anyway, smiling as politely as she could manage at her sole ally in this car.

"Now, Donald," Goofy returned his attention to his partner, munching on his own Smartie with a volume that seemed unnecessary for something barely the size of a fingernail, "It's not like we're out of leads..."

"Sure, of course not, a good mechanic can probably point out half a dozen clues on the mess that bastard made of my car, but as for where that gets us..."

"Well, we've got them hospital logs Celeste dug up..."

Celeste was about to credit Goofy for at least getting her name right, but Donald shook his head furiously, "Ooh, big bad businessman went in to visit the dead broad's next of kin a coupla times! Big whoop."

"He _convinced_ an underling to hide it for him!" said Celeste, unable to hide her irritation.

"Sure he did, that's something, it's not enough. Jesus, a guy like him's probably got more lawyers than I have gall stones..."

"Donald, I did tell you to check with that doctor..."

"You stop mothering me!" Donald jabbed his finger in his face, "I'm not saying it was a waste of time getting those records..."

" _I_ got those records," pointed out Celeste thinly.

"...but if you're gonna ask me where I, as an agent of the law, place my priorities, you bet your ass I'm ranking 'assassinated police official' somewhat higher than 'creative disposal of bureaucratic bullshit'! Now, we are gonna get back on the road, we're gonna find that bike, and we're gonna take him into custody, and if Mrs. Mabel in the backseat would like to say anything to it, she can walk back home, and I can sleep easy."

"I didn't _ask_ to be dragged along on your car chase!" said Celeste.

"I _said_ I was sorry!" said Goofy.

"I just figure you're more likely to be wasting precious time if you drive around the county looking for some guy on a bike when we don't even know anything about him..."

"Not so," said Donald, "We know he's a biker. We know a pair of the big man's detectives found paraphernalia connected to one biker club or another at the site of the power grid..."

"I didn't know that," said Goofy.

"Last dispatch they were able to get in last night," said Donald, "Got it out of the D.A in between palpitations."

"Seems to me he was the victim of a turf war."

"Between _bikers_?" asked Celeste.

"No, between trade unions, _yes_ , between bikers. I'm under the impression you've got something of an infestation here."

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call it an infest..." Celeste trailed off, "Well, be that as it may, you're still not going to get anything done driving around and looking for somebody you can't even describe."

"You are underestimating my abilities, woman. I'm not gonna say I'm offended or shit like that, but I'll have you know, I didn't win this job in a raffle..."

"That's just where the car's from," said Goofy with ill-disguised laughter, earning a murderous glare from Donald.

"Well, I'm sorry if I offended," said Celeste in a tone whose frigidness surprised even her, "I'll be happy to get out of your way."

"Now, Celeste..." began Goofy, but she was already fumbling with the car door.

"You can unlock the door whenever you like," she told Donald curtly.

"Celeste, we're a coupla miles past your town limits..."

"Well, I've lived here my whole life, I'm sure I can figure out the way."

Donald was still scrutinizing her in the rearview mirror. Celeste met his eyes in the mirror, "Well?"

"You're asking for trouble, lady. You _are_ aware there's at _least_ one kidnapper and _at least_ one murderer running around, including a potentially unaffiliated motorcycle riding assassin?"

"I'm sure I can manage."

"Ha," he barked dryly. Celeste heard the clutch of the car unlocking. Goofy moved as if to stop her again, but she was already opening the door...

"Oh," she stopped short, looking off into the tall grass on the side of the road.

"Stubbed your toe already, huh?"

She turned back to Donald, "Don't you see it? Over there, in the dark..."

Donald craned his neck, and Goofy too, nearly falling past them out of the car. They all saw it, a faint flicker in the dark, almost like...

"Campfire."

"Ain't that something?" remarked Donald, unimpressed.

"Well, maybe they've seen something," said Celeste.

"Maybe."

"Well, if they've been camped out by the side of the road long enough, they might've seen the bike go past, they could tell us something about it."

"Sure, or they could tell us about all the bears they saw shitting in the woods, I'm not too thrilled about either prospect."

"Aren't you part of the Federal Bureau of _Investigation_? Investigating would appear to be your job."

"Investigating things that are worth investigating, sure. I don't make it a habit to interrogate every schmuck on the side of the road."

"Now, Donald, it seems to me she's got a point. We oughta at least try..."

"You keep your trap out of this!"

"Don't you remember that case out in El Paso?"

"Goofy, I swear to Christ..."

"...well, you told me that there was no such thing as a worthless witness, and I tell ya, if it wasn't for your hunch with that one fella outside..."

"You wanna talk to the hobo? Fine!" Donald stepped out of the car, "You two follow my lead."

"What, you're including _me_?" asked Celeste.

"You have any objections?"

Of course Celeste didn't, besides the initial nervousness of being conscripted as a stooge of the FBI. She supposed this time, at least, she ran less a risk of needing to fight back the urge to vomit.

Donald locked the car and they proceeded on through the waist high grass toward the glow of the campfire, which had been set in a stretch of pebbly ground. It was a rare night, Celeste noticed. No moon in the sky, but a fresh cool wind. Probably one of the last true autumnal nights they'd have before the biting cold of winter set in.

"Well, hello, friends!" greeted a voice, as the tiny, stooped figure sitting by the fire got to his feet, "We were just about to crack open a can of beans."

"How appetizing," said Donald, giving him the once over.

He was an older gentleman, dressed in some tattered approximation of a nice suit. Raggedy trousers, a vest that may have once been violet but that age had stained to a dark, ugly brown. He wore a pair of leather shoes scuffed almost to the point of falling apart, and his white wool gloves were not quite white, and peppered with pockmarks.

He lifted his top hat to them in salute, "Not often we get visitors to come warm themselves by our fire."

"We?" began Goofy, though it soon became apparent there was somebody else sitting at the fire, a little, grimy-faced boy who looked up at them with a bold smile as they approached.

"That's my Pinocch!" declared the older man cheerily, "And as for me, I'm Jiminy, that's Jiminy Cricket, at your service."

"Cricket?" asked Celeste.

"Well, that's what they call me anyways. Because crickets have stories to tell, and I've got 'em too."

"Well, if you call eardrum cancer 'stories'..." began Donald, but Goofy interjected, "Well, if you've got stories, we're more than interested in hearing 'em!"

"Oh, well, that's just grand!" he beamed, showing a big, yellow smile as he gestured to either side of him, "Come on, come on, make yourselves at home."

Donald gave each of them a poisonous glare as he sat down at the most extreme distance from both Jiminy and Pinocch. Goofy, clearly more intent on being approachable, sat to Jiminy's right, while Celeste took up a spot between Goofy and Pinocch. The boy turned to her as she sat down, grinning up at her.

"Hello," Celeste greeted him with a smile of her own. He nodded, but didn't say anything aloud. Shy, maybe... He _was_ at that age, from the look of him.

"Is...um...is Pinocch your son?" asked Celeste looking back at Jiminy.

Donald clearly didn't appreciate her asking the question, but she decided to ignore him.

"Oh? Oh, no, no... Y'see, Pinocch's father was a dear old pal of mine, and he's since left us. I figure I owed it to him to look after him."

"Keep him off the streets, yeah?" asked Donald dryly. Goofy gave him a reproachful look, but Jiminy didn't seem offended, instead letting out a hearty laugh as he began stirring some beans in a can, producing a noise that Celeste could only describe as 'visceral'.

"Well, certainly! Now, I know you fellas...and you, my dear..." he inclined his head to Celeste, big eyes sweeping up and down her in a way long years at Cid's had done a great deal to prepare her for, even if she never quite got used to it.

"...must think it's irresponsible of me to be raising a child on the road. But better out here in the open air than in those towns and cities! Why, there ain't nothing there but danger and temptation! Vice and wickedness. A young boy in the city's more likely to join up with some gang..."

Donald shrugged at that, as if he couldn't argue the point.

"...or get up to all manner of devilry with sporting and drinking and that's not getting started on girlies!" he looked around at them all, his attention resting, again on Celeste, "No, no, we're much better off here."

"Yeah!" Pinocch announced with such abruptness that Celeste bit back a scream, "Jiminy protects me from all the bad stuff."

Celeste struggled to catch her breath, pressing her hand to her rapidly beating heart.

"Now, Pinocch, why don't you show 'em that little dance you can do."

"Oh, now there won't be any need for...aw, shit," Donald tried, and failed to stop the proceeding from coming to pass, but the kid was already on his feet, executing what appeared to be a tap dance sans tap shoes, moving with an admitted deftness around all of them, feet quick and nimble as he circled the fire, that uncanny smile still on his face.

"Yes, we're much better off out here," continued Jiminy, as Pinocch circled around behind him, "Much better off. Why, even the things I've heard out of town lately's gotten me all riled up. People being kidnapped, shot..." he made little tsk tsk noises under his breath.

"Well, as a matter of fact..." began Goofy.

"It's all a very unfortunate business, indeed," said Donald, in a much terser voice, "I don't suppose you heard how it happened?"

"Well, Donald, I don't know as that's appropriate in front of a..."

Donald silenced Goofy with a look, "They say the police commissioner got it good from some fella on a bike. Probably one of those same gangs you're so keen to get your kiddo from."

"Oh, just dreadful, dreadful..." Jiminy muttered, shaking his head, "You know, I don't like to be a pessimistic fella as a rule, but it seems more and more like we're living in the Judgment times. I'm always telling Pinocch..."

"And you know," Donald continued, giving only the sparest look over to the boy as he did his little dance right on past him, "They saw that motorcycle left down on that very road there," he nodded to the road, and the shadow of their banged up Buick parked at the side of it.

Jiminy raised his eyebrows, "Oh, you don't say?"

"Seems so," Donald nodded, "Mighty unsettling business, you might say."

"Oh my, oh my, oh my..."

"I don't suppose you've seen that bike, then?"

"What?" Jiminy looked up sharply, big eyes narrowing, but only slightly, "Oh, no, no, I'm sure I'd have remembered. We've only been sitting at the side of this road all day, and...well..." he chuckled, "I take to making a note of everybody I sneak a peek at on that road over yonder..."

"Do you?"

Jiminy nodded, fishing about in his vest, "Now, where in the world...ah, here we go!" and he filched out a tiny leather bound notebook, "My journal. That's where I keep my stories, all the people that come our way here in this great wide somewhere."

"Ah..." Donald looked at it, "That's something. No motorcycle, though?"

"Well, now, I don't think so," he made a little noise as if considering, "Let me just check..." and he set to flipping through the notebook, lips pursed in an expression of intense concentration.

Donald made no effort to hide his irritation, heaving a tremendous sigh and tapping his fingers against his arm. Goofy started whistling tunelessly.

"Must be here somewhere..."

Celeste couldn't keep from leaning forward a little, in anticipation. It seemed unlikely, really, and yet...something about that way he'd started when Donald mentioned the bike coming by, as if he _did_ remember.

But then why would anybody...

Celeste saw a shadow spread out on the ground before her, a tiny figure looming over her shoulder, hands out...

Before she could make another motion, something long and thin was pressed against her throat, pulling her back, held in two tiny, but surprisingly firm hands.

"Donald!" Goofy cried in a warning, as the other agent very helpfully exclaimed, "Jesus Christ!"

"Now, now, fellas, stay calm..." warned Jiminy, in a placid tone that was more terrifying than any raised voice, "We wouldn't want any accidents."

Celeste tried to push back, but Pinocch was surprisingly strong, the strip of wire in his hands firm, almost sharp as it dug into her neck.

"Bastard took our guns!" Donald discovered, filching about in his pockets.

"Pinocch's got quick feet, and quicker fingers," pointed out Jiminy, turning one weapon over in his hand, the other one sitting on the ground beside him, "His Daddy learned that the hard way, that's true enough."

"You sick fuck, what the hell is this about?"

"Oh, no hard feelings, fellas!" declared Jiminy, "Just getting by with living on the road. It ain't an easy life, worthy though it is."

"They had badges in their pockets, Jiminy!"

"Oh, I see that..." Jiminy was sifting through a tiny pile at his feet. Celeste saw the half shrunken tube of Smarties lying among them as he lifted up one leather flap, the silver badge inside it, "FBI men, eh?" in a stern voice, like a displeased father, he addressed Donald, "Now, why didn't you tell us you was cops?"

"Why didn't _you_ tell us you and your golem were highway robbers?"

Pinocch pulled the wire tighter around Celeste's neck, she let out a harsh, high yelp.

"Donald, he'll kill her!" warned Goofy.

"Oh, not kill her...just get her nice and blue, I think..." said Jiminy very neatly, "Blue's a nice color, got a calming quality to it. I do _like_ blue, particularly on a lady..."

His face never lost that gentle, calm quality, not moving from Celeste's own eyes once. She tried to scream, to fight back, to no avail.

"Now, you fellas are gonna get down on your knees, and you're gonna ask the the Almighty for deliverance from evil..."

"Now, Mr. Cricket..." began Goofy, "That woman, she's no part of this..."

"Well, sure she is! Any woman wandering about in the witching hour knows good and well what's coming to her..."

Celeste gave up trying to pull away at the wire, it was fixed too tightly around her neck, slicing into her skin...her vision was hazy, blurring in and out of focus...

 _Not like this. It_ can't _end like this._

 _Why not?_ Some other voice seemed to tell her, _Aerith, Amphitrite, all those missing girls, Kairi... Sora. Who ever said you had any_ right _to find your son? If he can be found at all..._

Sora. Sora, lost and gone, and vanished, her son... How could it be that she could remember him so well, and yet at the same time, it was harder to hear his voice in her head, his laugh, that smile, the way he would erupt into tumultuous giggles when...

Celeste knew what she must do. Deftly, quickly, she reached over her shoulder, feeling with her fingers for the spot just under the boy's neck...

And she tickled him like a maniac.

Every kid was the same, it seemed. The boy burst into a peal of giggles, uncontrollable laughter.

"What the...?" began Donald, but the boy had already stumbled back, the wire slackening. This was all Celeste needed to duck beneath the wire, drop to her knees, dive away from Pinocch.

"Goofy!" she cried, grabbing the one gun from where it had fallen on the floor and tossing it to the agent, who fumbled to catch it, but managed all the same, looking like he couldn't believe it himself.

"That's the ticket!" cheered Donald, taking advantage of the dumbstruck Jiminy to grab at the arm holding _his_ gun, wresting it from his grasp as he kicked the older man right below the belt, sending him doubled over, "Goofy, you get that Silly String off the munchkin."

"On it!" Goofy moved over to Pinocch, whose laughter had subsided, but who wasn't able to move fast enough to recollect the wire before Goofy seized it, and set about using it to bind his hands, "Now, I ain't tryin' hurt ya, but if you can spare a thought to what you've done, I'll call that all in a day's work..."

"Here's the journal," Celeste grabbed the notebook from where it had fallen, dangerously close to the fire.

"I trust you can read, Super Mom?" Donald asked, not as meanly as he usually did, not taking his eyes from Jiminy, who he'd forced onto his knees.

"You're not gonna find a thing in that book!" he spat desperately.

"Let us be the judge of that, you degenerate. I've got a mind to blow your brains out and write it off as you sneezing too hard."

"What's it say, Celeste?" asked Goofy.

"Er..." Celeste looked hastily through it. The writing was simplistic, spare, like a child's, yet the pages were very neat, meticulously kept, smooth and white despite its evident use. Celeste found herself thinking of the coded letter, bent over it at Milo's side.

This, at least, was written in English.

" _Two black Bentleys. S &S. Maybe transporting?_"

"S&S, that's Styx and Stones, the mafia guys?" demanded Donald.

"You seem to know so well!" exclaimed Jiminy.

"Shut up!"

"It's not stories," said Celeste, "It's just...designations. Descriptions of cars, if he saw a driver. Here, one month ago, he spied on a couple going at it in their backseat..."

"Oh, a pervert, eh? Why am I not surprised..."

"There's sums of money written beneath each one," Celeste looked up at him, "You spy on people and then you blackmail them."

"They have the gall to do their wickedness in the open, they oughtn't be surprised!"

"Here...today," Celeste pointed at the most recent entry with a new energy, " _Black motorcycle, helmet on driver. Gun. Traded bike in..._ "

"Ditched the evidence," said Donald, "Well, shit."

"Wouldn't have known _that_ if he we hadn't stopped to talk," pointed out Goofy, "Just be looking around for the same bike..."

"We get it, save it."

" _...Peg Leg came to pick it up_ ," she frowned, looking at Jiminy, "What's Peg Leg, like a code..."

But Donald had turned sharply, "What did you say?"

"Peg Leg, I guess he helped the shooter get rid of the bike, but..."

"Well, I'll be damned," Donald turned back to Jiminy, "What the hell do _you_ know about Peg Leg Pete?"

"I know you don't start any trouble with him, unless you know what you're doing!" said Jiminy, "He's got it in deep with some powerful folks, and I'd never..."

"Aw, stow it," and Donald rammed the butt of his gun into the back of Jiminy's head, knocking him out at once.

"Peg Fuckin' Leg Pete," grumbled Donald, looking at Goofy, "Can you believe it?"

"You'd think he'd have gone legit by now, all the trouble he got up in..."

"Wait, wait..." said Celeste, "You _know_ this guy?"

"Know him?" asked Donald, "We trained together at the Academy. Worked shoulder to shoulder with him near ten years before the shit hit."

"You know what they say," said Goofy, "It's a small world, after..."

"I know he moved down southwest, but call me an idiot, I thought he'd be trepanning out by Yellowstone like a sensible idiot."

"Well, why did you knock him out?" asked Celeste, "He might've told us where to find him!"

"Screw that noise. There's better ways to get ahold of Peg Leg Pete."

"Oh?"

"Sure, just point me to the nearest body of water, and I'll show you a beached whale like you couldn't believe."

Goofy sighed heavily, straightening up from binding Pinocch's limbs, "This is a real shame... Just a kid."

"It's horrible," Celeste looked into the boy's eyes, and he met them, cold, stern, hateful, "Raising a kid to...help rob and extort people..."

"Not my Maxie," said Goofy, "Least I like to think not. Our kids are us, and it's on us to be the best us for our kids."

"Thank you, Socrates, now back to business," said Donald, "We've got a lead and we've gotta get moving."

"We're just gonna _leave_ them here?" asked Celeste.

"Why the hell not? I've got no time to process these idiots. We're investigating four separate crimes, and even then I might be selling that short."

Celeste looking nervously from the prone, unconscious Jiminy to the boy. His eyes gave her goosebumps. They were cold, passionless, remorseless...almost inhuman.

"Fuck, I need a cigarette," Donald was fidgeting with one, and his lighter, "That was some good work there."

"What?"

"Yes, I'm complimenting you, take it now before I change my mind. Real crack job. How'd you think of it?"

"Well..." Celeste began, feeling quite stupid, "Kids are...are ticklish. I figured even _that_ kid must..."

And she broke down crying, unexpectedly, suddenly, so much so that it startled her, head bent, face soaked with tears.

"Aw, Celeste..." and Goofy wrapped an arm around her shoulder, "It ain't easy, is it?"

"It never is," agreed Donald, also sounding surprisingly soft, "But you stick with us, we're gonna find your boy."

Celeste looked at him, blinking away tears, "I thought I was a liability?"

"You are. But you saved my ass, and you've got as much a stake in this as the rest of us. Now c'mon, I'd prefer we found that old bastard before morning."

And he started off for the car. Goofy gave her a light pat on the shoulder, urging her on. And Celeste went on with them, though at the same time, she couldn't quite keep from looking back at the two forms in the grass...

 _Nothing you can do_ , she thought, _But for Sora...God, for Sora..._

For Sora she could do anything. And she would.

* * *

Hot days, cold nights, laboring in the shadow of those huge metal towers. Sweat kissing his brow, his neck, his back...

The other men would whisper to each other. He could see their looks, could feel them.

He would not let them bother him. He could not, not again. This was a new life, he could not make the same mistakes...

He had to work. Work was the only way forward. Drilling the earth, making it bleed...foundations for a life. Just keep his face on the earth, the drills, the oil...nothing else.

They thought he couldn't understand them, but he was learning. How could he not? But they fancied him some stupid ape, some foreign insect polluting their tiny world.

" _Never says a word, not in Spanish or nothing. Think he's an idiot._ "

" _Fuck were they doing hiring him? Got a buddy down in Boulder could do this same job and tell you what he's doing as he does it._ "

" _Fuckin' wetbacks, man... Give it a coupla years, there'll be running the whole shit show, and still won't have a word of English 'tween 'em._ "

There was nothing to be gained from listening, from acting as if he knew. Yet sometimes he imagined what it would be like if he _did_ intervene, if he proved he knew what they were saying. What they would say, what would they do, to learn that this big, dumb animal wasn't dumb at all...

And he was very angry.

But he couldn't be angry. No, it was too dangerous, there was too much at stake.

There she was, coming to the rig. This was the first time, he remembered now. All work stopped as she got out of that crisp blue convertible, pearly white cowgirl boots meeting the hard packed desert ground, that short black hair tossed by a raw, hot breeze.

Nobody dared say a thing against anybody so long as she were there. She roamed among them like a Princess, or a Queen. The boss's daughter, water in the desert.

There was a word for that... Oasis. So she had been.

She smiled at them all, shook hands, donned a hard hat like the rest of them. She was interested, really interested in how it all worked. The rig, the oil...she knew a lot too. Going to school for it, they said. She took an interest in all of them... And then she'd come up to him...

He smiled sheepishly, head lowered. You _had_ to lower your head when they came around, you didn't want to seem presumptuous, but respectful...

" _You must've been hard at work_ ," always a smile, not condescending, but kind, considerate. She must have seen how tired he looked, even as she'd tried to wipe his brow before she arrived.

He couldn't say anything to her. He could understand, could say a little, but...

" _Oh..._ " she nodded, " _Lo siento. ¿Has estado trabajando duro?_ "

She was fluent, confident and assured. He hadn't heard an awful lot of Spanish since coming here. It was comforting, reassuring... _She_ was comforting and reassuring.

" _You speak very well._ "

" _I'm learning. It must be difficult, no one else speaking Spanish._ "

" _I manage._ "

" _Well, if you ever do want to talk to someone..._ "

A crash from above, something tipping, falling... Surely, she'd be crushed...

Riku came to rest against a low stone wall, rubbing his head, trying to shake the persistent, insistent pain from it. They were coming quicker now, those flickers of that life, that old life. He was beginning to understand, and the understanding was both frightening and, weirdly, comforting.

If only he didn't know how it ended.

"Come on..." he told himself, "Come on, focus. You're here now. _Here_."

He couldn't slip away again. He had work to do, and from the look of things an entire day had been spent in the past. It was well past dark, and very cold. He wasn't sure where, exactly he was, but the outline of the mountains up ahead indicated he'd wandered pretty far north.

Weirdly, his feet weren't sore, he didn't feel _tired_. Well, he did, but not the kind of tired you _should_ feel after walking for a whole straight day.

It didn't make sense. But nothing did.

There was something at the base of the ridge, in a low valley. Houses, shops, streets. A town, but not one Riku was familiar with.

He came upon the big wooden sign at the entrance: Main Street U.S.A. There was a car parked by the sign, vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it.

The streets were grim, silent, no sound but the wind whistling down alleyways and narrow side streets.

There was a buzzing at the back of his head, like an insistent scratching...an urgent warning, or maybe just a quick tip, ' _Here. Here now. Close._ '

He almost wished _he_ would speak into his head again, just for some closure, some clarity. Some company. But he dismissed the thought almost as soon as it appeared. Better to be alone and haunted by memories than alone and haunted by... _that_.

A sharp, harsh noise from somewhere close by caught Riku off guard. He whirled around, stumbling a bit.

Barking...a dog, and gone as soon as it had happened, no sign of the animal in question. This place was abandoned, forgotten... And yet why did it seem like something had happened here?

The high street opened up into a wide plaza, a big empty fountain in the middle of it. But this isn't what commanded Riku's attention at once.

There, on the cobblestones, still and menacing in the dark...a body. He understood very well what a body looked like by now.

And, as much as he told himself he wanted nothing to do with it, he should keep going, mind on his task, Riku found himself propelled forward anyway.

His boots squelched in blood, and something thicker, more pulpy. He drew back his foot, lifting a hand to his mouth to repress a sudden urge to gag.

A short figure, stout. The head had been crushed, presumably after falling from someplace higher up. No way of knowing...

And Riku saw the hat, a big floppy gardening hat, lying a few inches from the corpse. That hat, a silly hat, a familiar one too.

He knew its wearer. Had known him, been in the same club as him, wasted long summer afternoons with him...

 _Axel got him to help you break out of jail_. Riku realized with a shock, a memory from another life, but _his_ life, his real, ordinary, last life.

Vivi. Dead. Dead, here in the middle of nowhere, no one around, no one to explain...

Why? Nothing made any sense, nothing fit together, nothing...

He lifted his head and beheld the building opposite the fountain, what was surely supposed to be some big grand landmark at the foot of the mountain...

Silently, Riku passed through the big open gap where the doors had been, looked up at the great gaping maw in the middle of the roof, the metal struts of rafters that had come crashing down, the sections of tiled floor that had been splintered beyond recognition.

At once, Riku knew something terrible had happened here...

A short crash as a great heap of bricks came falling from a section of wall.

...and recently.

The wind whistled loudly through the ruin, the many gaps in the walls, the roof. Like someone singing. Or wailing.

Riku shuddered, and fixed his eyes ahead of him. There was a big metal console at the far end of the room. Like everything, it was beyond repair. Riku noted the scattered wires,heavy cords, cables. It led out into some big rectangular gap in the wall.

There was a big metal box, lying dusty and unused in the doorway. It had apparently been hooked up to the cables.

Ski lift. The other car must be on the top. But, given the cables didn't seem to be in order...

That buzzing again, urging him forward, up the mountain, into the snow. A terrible idea, of course, but he could not resist the urge to give in.

Maybe he shouldn't. Just this once.

Riku started up the mountain.

* * *

It was about a whole day of nothing, and then the world started ending.

Probably the weirdest part was, even though they were supposed to be on limited power because of the blackout, somebody had kept Doctor Doctor's Judy Collins album on blast.

" _Riding on the city of New Orleans/Illinois Central, Monday morning rail/Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders/Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail..._ "

There were wild footsteps up and down the hallway outside. Demyx hadn't been put back in the Icebox after...well, after what he guessed counted as Vexen's funeral. Instead, Xaldin had just shoved him into one of the tiny white rooms up and down the hallway and locked the door.

He'd tried doodling in his notebook...well, _Zex's_ notebook, whatever...but it hadn't worked. The hours had dragged on, and try though he might, Demyx couldn't get the thought of Vexen, of Axel's friend bent over him, beating the life out of him with his fists, out of his mind.

And now...

" _All along the southbound odyssey/The train pulled out at Kankakee/And rolls along past houses, farms and fields/Passin' trains that have no names/And freight yards full of old black men/And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles..._ "

"Come on," the door opened, and here was the Man of the moment, standing there, glowering beneath those two ridiculously bushy eyebrows.

"What _now_?" Demyx asked, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice, and not really caring if he sounded bratty.

Xaldin scowled, which seemed to be the only face he was capable of making anyway, "We're clearing out."

"Wait...is that like... _leaving_?"

By way of answer, Xaldin stepped forward and hauled Demyx to his feet, basically dragging him out of the room. He barely had time to check his two earthly possessions: the journal in his pocket, and Larxene's ugly old lady jacket, as they went barreling down the thin, dimly lit hallway, where Dem could see doors open the whole way down, and beyond those doors...

"I-is that _smoke_?" he asked incredulously.

"I already told you," said Xaldin, "We're clearing out."

" _Good morning, America/How are ya?/Say don't you know me? I'm your native son/I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans/And I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done..._ "

"Wait, wait, you're burning the place down?"

"And you with it, if you don't keep up."

"But, wait, what the..."

But they were already moving with ridiculous speed down some narrow, dark corridor, the floor slanting gradually up beneath them.

" _Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car/Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score/Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle/Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor..._ "

Sirens began to blare...smoke alarms, probably. The fumes were clouding the air, making it hard to see, stinging Demyx's eyes. Xaldin moved on, unbothered.

" _And the sons of Pullman porters/And the sons of engineers/Ride their father's magic carpet made of steel/Mothers with their babes asleep/Are rockin' to the gentle beat/And the rhythm of the rail is all they feel..._ "

"Zex!" Demyx called out as the floor began to level beneath them, "Yo, Zex! _Zexion_!"

He turned abruptly, face blanching as he hurried over.

"Back to your business, boy," scolded Xaldin, "No time for gossip,"

Zexion glared at him, turning his attention back to Demyx, "Are you alright?"

"Dude, what the hell is going on?"

Zexion shook his head, "What Xemnas told us last night. The Mansion is too dangerous now, there's too much dirty laundry in the wind."

"So they're burning it down?"

Zexion sighed, "And moving everything to another site."

" _Everything?_ "

"And everyone," Zexion looked pained, "I tried to talk to him, say you were alright, you weren't going to say anything, but since Vexen..."

He didn't finish, and Demyx knew he didn't need to. His confession from last night, how _he'd_ done what Xemnas had accused Vexen of doing. One thing to be considered the dead dude's accomplice, but to know you were the one responsible and the dead dude was dead for nothing...

"I didn't have a lot of clout to begin with, but now I'm afraid I might be as much of a prisoner as..."

"You can ponder that on your own time, boy," hissed Xaldin, "We're out of here by sunup. You move, or you burn."

"Jesus fuck, man!" Demyx turned to him ruefully, "I'm seen some freaky shit since I showed up here, but that's frigging Medieval..."

He was already being dragged off, Zexion calling after him, "You'll be alright! I swear it, nothing's going to happen to..."

" _Nighttime on the city of New Orleans/Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee/Halfway home, we'll be there by morning/Through the Mississippi darkness/Rolling down to the sea..._ "

"In here!" they'd approached the bed of what looked like a moving truck: big boxy thing, black and silver, with the _X_ -Corp 'X' painted over the doors.

"You have got to be..."

But Xaldin had already opened the doors and thrown Demyx in, where he landed with little dignity on his stomach, sealing him in the dark.

" _But all the towns and people seem/To fade into a bad dream/And the steel rails still ain't heard the news/The conductor sings his songs again/The passengers will please refrain/This train has got the disappearin' railroad blues..._ "

"Oh crud..." Demyx breathed, "Oh, come _on_ , not _again_!"

He hammered on the doors, "I didn't do _anything_!"

 _So what?_ He changed his tune.

"You are all a bunch of corporate drips, and everything Olette ever said about you was right, and I'm sorry I didn't listen to her and throw Larxene's resume in the trash before she could send it to you, and..."

"Hey!"

He let out a sharp, girlish shriek, whirling around at the voice, "H-hello?"

There was somebody else in the truck, he could see that now, even in the near darkness. There was a stretcher, or a cot or something, and somebody was strapped down on it. He could make out brown hair, brown eyes...

"B-Belle?"

But no, of course not. He'd seen Belle, Zexion had shown him. But she looked a lot like her...

"Oh, thank God, you can _speak_!" she sounded near fit to cry.

"Um...yeah. Yeah, I can speak," he paused a second, "I'm Demyx."

She made a motion as if to nod, but winced, gritting her teeth as if the action caused severe pain, "J-Jane. Do you...do you have any idea what's going..."

But at that point, the truck rumbled to life around them. In the next second, they were moving forward, Jane's cot wobbling dangerously, until Demyx reached out a hand to steady it.

He looked at her balefully, "Sister, I wish I knew what to tell you."

They drove off, the smell of smoke eerily apparent even inside the truck, and the final, now quite distorted chorus of Judy's last song ringing in their ears.

" _Good night, America/How are ya?/Say don't you know me? I'm your native son/I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans/I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done/Yes, I'll be gone a million miles when the race is run..._ "

* * *

 **A/N:** Updates will return on a regular schedule for the next several chapters. Expect Chapter 38 next Friday!


	38. Signs Align

Chapter 38, Signs Align

 **A/N:** It's a new day in Radiant County and, with that new day, no number of new intrigues, new troubles and, maybe, finally,the barest flicker of hope.

Consider it an early Christmas gift. Or a Hanukkah gift, if you're observing.

* * *

Running again. Running through empty, fathomless darkness, tall stained glass panels to either side, dappled light sparkling down on the featureless floor ahead of him. He passed each set, moving through the light, into the darkness, into the light again...

Each window seemed to vanish as he passed it. Always darkness behind, the dim promise of light ahead.

" _You are my sunshine/My only sunshine/You make me happy/When skies are gray..._ "

Still singing her song, and still nowhere to be found. Maybe she _couldn't_ be found. He couldn't find anybody else, why should _this_ be any different?

But he could catch _him_...yes, running ahead of him, heavy boots thudding on the floor, echoing unfathomably into oblivion.

" _You'll never know, dear/How much I love you..._ "

He had to hurry, he could just reach him...

" _Please don't take my sunshine away._ "

The first gunshot. He couldn't let that slow him, shock him. There was still time...

The stained glass began to crack, to rupture on either side of him... He could still catch up, he was almost there, could see the back of that jacket, the hood raised over the head...

"Please!" he called out, "Please, I just want to..."

What _did_ he want? To talk? About _what_? There was something important, some big unresolved question...

He could find an answer here. It was the only place left.

Was he slowing down? Yes, he was slowing, stopping. Maybe he'd heard, maybe he cared, maybe he actually wanted to help!

Sora reached out, put his hand on his shoulder...

And felt himself pushed back, a raised, angry voice railing at him, "Just stay _put_!"

The other gunshot, the smell of gunpowder... The floor was shattering now, as if it were as glass as the walls. He was falling, falling...

Sora opened his eyes, breath harsh, ragged. There was a monster ache in his neck, and he winced as he sat up on the uneven, rough cot.

Cot...the loft, above the abandoned shop, in the abandoned town, with all the other abandoned kids. There was fresh, pale sunlight streaming in through the grimy windows, illuminating the disheveled sheets, the graffiti (sorry, _tags_ ) on the walls.

Morning in Paradise. How could he have forgotten?

The whole scene was peaceful, even _pleasant_. Comforting. Hard to believe it had seemed so imposing, so haunted last night.

But did that mean...

" _So far away..._ "

A girl's voice, singing, somewhere close by. Sora sat up, grunting softly as he got to his feet.

That must have been a dream too. He couldn't actually have seen...no, it was just some hallucination, just the same as all his other crazy, confusing, scary dreams.

"... _doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore..._ "

Sora moved carefully around the room, taking in the tags on the wall with more attention than had had last night. Purple cat, skull and crossbones...helpfully adorned with a pair of headphones...

" _It would be so fine to see your face at my door..._ "

He wasn't imagining it. Sora quickened his pace, moving into the narrow passage, toward the peeling white door.

" _It doesn't help to know you're just time away..._ "

A flash of wet red hair, swept easily over the shoulder, thin, pale arms gently running a towel through it. Sora felt his heart in his mouth.

" _Long ago I reached for you and there you stood/Holding you again could only do me good..._ "

With shaking fingers, he opened the door the rest of the way, stepped into view of the cracked vanity mirror...

" _Oh how I wish I could, but you're so far..._ "

"Kairi?"

She screamed, rounded on her heel and tossed a wet towel at him.

"Oh..." Sora trailed off, realizing his mistake, "Wow, I am...oh my God..."

"Sora! Knock, much?"

"I am...I am _so_ sorry..." he felt his face burning up as he averted his eyes from the mostly unclad Shiki, "I...I thought..."

"Oh, I don't think I wanna _know_ what you were thinking. Totally grody..."

"No, I mean...I thought you were...I thought you were someone else."

Shiki cocked an eyebrow, neatly tying her towel around her midsection to preserve her modesty, tossing her hair back over her shoulder, "I've got _way_ better pipes than Beat."

Sora smiled sheepishly, "It's...it's stupid, I...I guess I was having this dream, my..."

"Your girlfriend?"

Sora looked back at her, "Um...yeah. Sorry, that's...that's embarrassing, I...I promise, I wasn't trying to be a creep, or anything..."

"Do I look like her?" she asked abruptly, catching Sora totally off guard.

"W-what?"

"Your girlfriend? Kairi, right? Do I look like her?"

 _Well, I have mistaken you for her about two times in the last 24 hours, but that might just be me going crazy._

"Er...you both have red hair?"

Shiki giggled, "You were _supposed_ to say we're both really pretty."

"Oh, you are! I mean...I mean, she is, and you are, but...I mean, I don't..."

"It's cool, newbie," and she moved past him, patting Sora on the shoulder. He looked from her receding figure to the claw foot bathtub she must have just vacated, and the dozing cat perched on the edge, eyeing him warily.

"You guys have running water?" he asked.

"Huh?" her voice echoed back to him down the hall.

Sora stuck his head out the bathroom door, "Uh, I was asking... _jeez_..." and he started aside as Mr. Mew neatly jumped from his perch and trotted out past him, giving him a reproachful look in the process, "...do you guys have running water?"

"Oh, as if. That was my bath for the month. The _guys_ don't notice, but this place stinks like barf and burps half the time."

"So...um...how do you get water?"

"Josh takes care of that."

"Josh..." he moved down the hall, very slowly, his eyes fixed always on the wall next to him, "He's, like, J-Dawg?"

"Yep. He goes up to this stream or something and gets water every once in a while. Wasn't for him, you'd think we were a bunch of cavemen squatters."

"Huh." he moved out of the passage, back into the main bedroom.

"Sora, you can look, you know, I'm decent."

"What?" but he turned to her anyway, feeling like a complete idiot.

Shiki had dressed, wearing the same clothes she'd had on yesterday. He supposed she didn't have a lot of others. She was just adjusting that pageboy cap of hers, as she studied him, giggling softly.

"You are _such_ a dork."

"Er...thanks?"

"Oh, don't feel bad about it! I'm _starved_ for dorks around here. Neku's too serious, and Beat's just a dummy."

"What about...um...Josh?"

Shiki looked at him, "Oh, Josh isn't a dork."

There was a weird, short silence, before Shiki declared, "Breakfast!", scooped Mr. Mew up in her arms, and moved out to the stairs.

"Er...breakfast," Sora agreed, "Yep." and followed.

They became aware of voices as they moved down to the shop floor.

"I'm telling ya, bro, leave it." Beat, sounding his usual mix of bored and mildly irritated.

"So you _do_ know what I'm talking about!"

"Yeah, I do, and I know you better leave it. Ain't nothing good thinking about it, _trust_ me..."

"You know, I liked you better, when you communicated in grunts and cuss words."

"And I liked _you_ better when you didn't communicate at all." but there was a tiny, laugh like grunt attached to that, as if he were trying to take the sting off.

Neku, however, didn't seem to be amused by it, Sora noticed as they descended the stairs. He was sitting behind the counter, headphones down around his neck, drumming his fingers against the dusty surface, teeth gritted in evident anger.

Beat, for his part, was draped across two beanbag chairs, arms behind his head and feet propped up on a stack of...

" _What_ did I say about stepping on the music?" Shiki demanded shrilly.

Beat practically backflipped away from the record sleeves he'd been using as a footstool, "T-to not do it. Ma'am."

"God, some of these things are _collectors' items_! We're sitting on a fortune!"

"The word's 'squatting', Shiki," said Neku dryly, prompting her to give him a glare.

Sora moved closer to the pile, studied the faded cardboard sleeves. He recognized a few of them from his Mom's own collection, that little bookcase in her study.

"This place was a record store?" he asked. Shiki shrugged, "Seems that way. We found a bunch of 'em stacked up in the back when we showed up."

"That's nice and all," said Neku, making no effort to make it sound like he thought it was nice at all, "But can we get _back_ to the point?"

"Aw, can you _stop_ buggin' about it, Phones? It's _nothing_..."

"Nice to see you're back to being such good friends," Shiki rolled her eyes, moving over to a stout cupboard in the corner, which she began rifling through.

"You guys are telling me you _didn't_ hear it?" Neku looked around.

"Hear _what_?" asked Shiki, straightening up, a pack of crackers in one hand and a jar of jam in the other, neither of which struck Sora as very appetizing.

Neku gritted his teeth, "Seriously? Big crashing noise...like an _explosion_?"

"Phones," said Beat deliberately, "Get. Over. It."

"Wait," said Sora, "Wait, you mean...you mean _you_ heard it too?"

Neku looked up at him, "You just flattering me, Lockpick?"

Sora shook his head, "No, I...I mean...I thought it was a bunch of broken glass...I mean, I thought it was part of this dream I was having, but..."

"You mean a nightmare?" asked Shiki abruptly. They all turned to her, noting her hand had gotten particularly quivery over the bread knife she was using to spread the jam over the crackers.

"Sora, sweetie...we all have nightmares," she said in a tiny, hoarse voice.

"Part of the package," said Beat bitterly, though this turned into a hastily suppressed shriek when Shiki suddenly gasped, " _That's_ why?"

"Why what?"

"You were looking for your girlfriend before?"

Sora blushed, "You...um...you didn't _have_ to say it like that, but thanks."

"Oh, don't feel bad! I had the same dreams too, for a while after..." she broke off, "You see people, right? People close to you, it's...I guess it's part of what they do."

"Is it?" asked Neku.

"What, you haven't had any dreams?" asked Shiki.

Neku just raised his eyebrows, face not changing, "Not that I remember."

"You're murkin', man," said Beat, "Look, we've all been there. But there's nothing out there to worry about."

"You calling me crazy, Beat?" asked Neku, voice dangerously quiet.

"I'm just saying, you're fresh out of that place, you're gonna be jumpy, it's natural..."

"Natural," he nodded, "Sure."

And he moved toward the door. Shiki called after him, "Neku! Aw, c'mon, Neku!"

The door opened, the little bell above it rang, and it swung shut behind him. Shiki scowled at Beat, "Nice going, dweeb."

"What? Girl, you know..."

"You guys heard it, didn't you?" asked Sora, looking from one of them to the other, "You did. Whatever it was?"

Beat stood tall, arms folded across his chest, "You saying I'm lying, Sarah?"

"Don't bullshit me, man," said Sora, "What happened to that love, peace happiness circle you guys were doing last night? You were basically eating out of Neku's hand, then..."

"Sora..." began Shiki, but Beat held up a hand, looking at her, then back to Sora, "Look, I'm not gonna get in your face..."

"A bit late for that." Sora told him, looking up at Beat as Beat looked down at him.

"...quit icing my grill Sarah," Beat told him, and there was something about the tremor of his voice that indicated something very clearly.

"You're scared," said Sora, "You heard whatever happened last night, and you're _scared_ of it. So you're pretending it didn't..."

Beat reached forward, grabbing Sora by the shirt and pulling him close, "You wanna try that again?"

Sora glowered at him. Was he _really_ trying to intimidate him? For _what_? Saying he was scared? Sora found himself thinking of the Underworld, the Captain, standing over him as he cried, his dog tag hanging from his hook. Lying on the ground, looking up into the face of an actual murderous beast as it growled and spat down at him...

Being dragged off by some big, hulking guy working for a big, hulking mega corporation, dragged down a hallway, locked away from the one person in the place who could possibly have a _clue_ about what was going on, who might sympathize...

"You're trying to scare me?" Sora prompted at last, "Try harder."

And he pulled himself away from Beat, who seemed stupefied into silence by the action.

"Sora!" Shiki called after him, just as she'd done with Neku, but he didn't spare her a second look as he passed out the door and into the street.

"Neku!" he called out, listening to his voice rebound up and down the narrow cobblestone street.

Like the loft, their little town was much less intimidating in the fresh light of day. If you ignored the boarded up windows, the graffiti on the walls (lots of it looking much older than any of Sora's new roommates), and the general air of emptiness, it seemed like any other small town. The fresh, clean mountain air was galvanizing. Sora suddenly felt more alive, quickening his pace.

"Neku! Hey, you around?"

He found him in the town square, standing ahead of the dried up fountain basin, and looking up at...

"Whoa."

"Really something, ain't it?" Neku didn't even look at him as he approached.

They stood there, side by side, looking up at the ruin that, just last night, had been a big, abandoned, but largely intact building, the biggest one in the place.

Sora felt his stomach do a somersault, "What do you think happened to it?"

"Don't know," Neku answered at once, "I'm more interested in everybody else pretending it _didn't_ happen."

Sora glanced at him, "You think they all know..."

Neku turned to him, "You heard it, right?"

"Well, I mean, I think..."

"You think. You know. Don't second guess it. Just...go with your gut. You heard it. It might've been in a dream, but you heard it. Dream, or not."

Sora considered, nodded, "Yeah...yeah, I heard it."

"And obviously..." he nodded to the ruin, "There was _something_ to hear. So that leaves us with something that happened, two people who'll admit they heard something..."

"...and two people who didn't."

"Nah, man," Neku leaned forward, "Two people who _say_ they didn't. There's a difference."

"You're saying they're lying?"

"What makes more sense?"

Sora lowered his head, "I...I dunno. You'd know them better than me, they're your friends."

"What did I tell you?" Neku cocked his head to the side, "They're not my friends. We're just in the same boat. And even _that's_ up for debate."

Sora felt goosebumps prickle up his arms, "What do we do?"

Neku shrugged, "Seems pretty obvious to me," he nodded at the ruin ahead of them, "Start at Point A."

"Point A," Sora repeated, "Am I allowed to not like Point A?"

"Well, you don't have to go in with me, if you don't want to." Neku was already moving toward it.

Sora rolled his eyes, moving to keep pace with him, "I said I didn't _like_ it. Didn't say I wasn't gonna go in."

And Neku just shrugged, another of his tiny, barely there smiles on his face. Sora sighed, took another look around the empty square, and followed him.

* * *

"Tell me we're not stuck."

"Fine. We're not stuck."

"Aw, crap, we're stuck?"

"Hey, it's not that big a deal, man..."

"Aw, shit, shit, shit... _dammit_!"

"Just...trust me, okay? I've gotten us out of worse than this."

The cold, blistering winds licked at their faces. It was all Axel could do to keep his eyes open, force his usual 'Nothing to panic about' smile on his face. But Saix wasn't easily convinced.

"I _told_ you we should've brought the tow chain."

"And tie it to what? My hips aren't _that_ good, Moonboy."

"We could've tied it to a...tree or something, revved out of this drift," he kicked the piled up down around their rear wheels, scowling ruefully.

"You see any trees?" Axel indicated the wide, snowy flat land around them, "Listen...we'll be fine. I'll get us out of this."

"Got an idea?"

"Eh, you're the smart one."

"So your idea is let _me_ come up with an idea?"

"Because I know you'll have one," Axel shrugged, "Am I wrong?"

Saix studied him for a while, "Okay, so...so there's _something_."

"That was fast!"

"You're not gonna like it."

"I like freezing my nuggets off even less, so let me have it."

His friend rolled his eyes, "Sometimes, man, I wish you'd take things seriously."

Axel leaned over the handlebars, cocking an eyebrow, "That's what I've got you for. You're my serious guy, balance me out."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! So, c'mon, what's the idea?"

Saix gave him that mischievous grin so rarely, that Axel couldn't help but feel a twinge of unease at it, while at the same time, a tiny, warm flicker despite the biting, bitter...

Cold.

It was inhumanly cold, wet too...Axel could feel every inch of him. Or rather, he _couldn't_ feel any inch of him, numbed as he was by the cruel, biting winds.

 _Dreaming. More...fucking dreams. Stay awake, focus. Christ sake,_ focus _._

He'd felt the night slip away around him, to be replaced by a dim, yet present light that must be dawn. Not warm, though, there was no warmth here, in the snow, on the mountain.

At least it wasn't _snowing_. But Axel doubted he'd even notice if it was. He was pinned in place, head forced up at an unnatural angle...could look at nothing but the sky above, pale blue.

No noise, either. Just the whistling of the wind through the mountains. It would be really peaceful if it weren't so empty, lonely...

Barren.

Axel had managed to crawl maybe two whole feet from where he'd fallen, but no more luck than that. He didn't know if he had any broken bones. Probably he did, but if that was the case, the cold had dulled all that pretty well. They didn't _feel_ broken at all, at any rate. Didn't help that about half of him was wedged deep into a snow drift, and try as he might, he couldn't claw his way out, not entirely.

No sign of the others. Tidus, who'd fallen ahead of him, Seifer and Roxas, who he could only hope had at least stayed with the car...

Roxas.

 _Should've left well enough alone. Always dragging well-meaning kids into your bullshit._

Roxas, Riku... Moonboy. He had a hell of a habit.

Maybe it was better, just staying here, in the cold, looking up at the sky... Wiped out again, alone this time. For the best. Nobody else to pick up, nobody else to feel sorry for, and to feel sorry for him.

Larxene could pick up the search for her brother. Hell, maybe she'd already found him, what did he know? She didn't really need him. _He_ was the one that had needed her, and he knew she'd never made peace with that. Why should she?

Nobody would miss him. Nobody should. Just slip away, into the cold...put out the flame once and for all.

Yeah...better. To the good. Whatever you wanted to call it. He'd been up to too much trouble, expected too many things to go just the right way. He didn't know why...as if his bullshit had some glorious track record of working out just right.

Sleep-in, drive too fast, get distracted, hit some kid on the side of the road. Get guilty, call in a favor, help a friend out of a jam, watch as your friend disappears into the dark, probably worse off than he ever could've been in a cell. Run away, fall in with the old flame, ignore what she tells you, ignore what you tell yourself, have a good time...

Ruin her life, while you're at it.

All he seemed to be good for. Showing up at the worst place in the worst time. Fucking up the people who cared, getting them to wonder why they ever bothered to begin with.

Axel worked his lips spasmodically. They were dry, cracked...felt like some foreign surface against his tongue.

"Uh..." he felt his throat working, aching, "S-shit..."

What wouldn't he give for a cigarette right about now? Light up one last smoke, get a little warm before the curtain call.

He could make peace with that. It would suck leaving so much unfinished, but...maybe unfinished was the best way for him to leave anything. Better than getting involved again, making more trouble...

He probably had a few Morleys left buried down in a pocket somewhere. He hadn't had a smoke since...since the last night at Larxene's place. Luxia hadn't liked that, the pink prick. Serve him right, whatever happened to him...

Could Larxene really have... No, probably not. He couldn't see it. Larxene was a lot of things, but she wouldn't have...

No, she would've. But when would she have had the time? They could've killed Marluxia a dozen times over before they left for the Mansion. There was Demyx to consider. She had to find her brother...

But if she _had_ killed him, maybe later...well, at least she'd gotten out.

Smokes. One last cigarette. That wasn't so much to ask? Some guys on death row asked for steak dinners. Axel didn't even like steak all that much, he just pretended to to offend Demyx.

Dem wasn't really a vegetarian, at least he hadn't been, then. He'd talk a big game, but when he and Larxene had gotten that charcoal grill fired up that first summer, he'd come scampering over like a mouse to a trap.

But maybe he stuck more to it now. He seemed like he had principles, even if he was still a big ditz. Holed up in the Dugout, watching his soap opera, totally oblivious to his best bro pining for him...

Axel felt his fingers brush past his belt. He winced...yeah, he'd definitely been banged up pretty good. Probably better it was so cold, the pain was so dulled. He felt around for his pocket, felt something soft, smooth... His lighter. Good, good start. If he had any smokes left, they were gonna be somewhere down below that...

Would be something if he flicked a finger the wrong way and ended up setting his pants on fire. How fitting, proper end, real dignified...

There, he could feel something rough, paper, crumpled up...shit, with all that box had been through, Axel supposed he was lucky it _was_ still a box.

If he could just...

"Ach!" His hand slipped, crunched down into the snow. Axel felt winded, as if he'd just surfaced from deep sea diving. He could see his lighter, now lying in the drift right at the periphery of his vision. And, there next to it, sticking up and out...a little guitar pick, _CP_ emblazoned in the side.

Well, _sitar_ pick would be more appropriate, he supposed. Demyx's, he'd picked it up in the band van. He'd almost forgotten.

It was the pick, and then his lighter, both sticking up weirdly, like badly planted seedlings.

"Aw, c'mon..." he reached forward, out and, almost at once, dislodged a considerable portion of snow, which came cascading down onto him, getting into his eyes, burying him further.

He couldn't see, just tiny slits of sunlight through this new load, his hand still outstretching, fingers numbly reaching out, looking for one or the other of his lost trinkets.

It was almost cozy. Wrapped up, almost dark...protected despite the cold.

 _Return to the womb_ , he mused sarcastically, _About damn time._

Maybe he'd be dug up in a thousand years and displayed in a museum, like one of those fucked up mummies they found in the Himalayas from, like, 300,000 years ago. Radiant County's very own Peking Man.

 _The Ax Man Cometh...Got it Memorized?_

He let out a long, low sigh, feeling his lungs protest the strain. Probably not a lot of air in this burrow of his anyway. Maybe had 30 minutes, an hour tops.

Weird, not to try anything, not to fight. Didn't feel natural, like giving up. He should probably put up _some_ struggle, just on principle...

But what would it accomplish? What had _any_ of this accomplished, up to now?

Still, would be nice if he could find Demyx's sitar pick, grab onto it. Have _something_ of a friend's to hold onto in the end.

He could barely reach, but he knew he must be close. Couldn't be his lighter, it was too thin, too brittle...should be easy to just get it loose, get his fingers around it...let nature run its...

A hand grasped his, quick and sudden, but not forceful. Still, the shock of it jolted Axel to his senses, forced another great gulp of air he didn't have. He heard a cry from outside.

"Shit! You...you're alive?"

Axel couldn't make out much about the voice. Sound was muffled under all the snow, even the words were distorted, echoey. He could feel the grip on his hand tighten.

"Listen...you're buried pretty deep here. But I...I'll get you out."

Axel wanted to tell him to give it up, not to bother. But words, by and large, failed him. He could feel his fingers going limp against the Good Samaritan's hand.

"Stay with me...it's gonna be okay, I promise."

There was a shuffling noise, a sifting. Axel heard snow falling away, thudding to the ground. The slits of sunlight breaking through began to widen. He squinted, flinched away...

When he opened his eyes, he saw a pair of eyes looking right back at him. Maybe blue, maybe green.

His breath halted in his lungs, his eyes widened. The tremulous hand brushed away some more snow, reached forward...fingers brushed the spot just under one eye: one of his teardrops.

"No way..." the eyes brightened up, widening in surprise, "No _way_..."

The snow began clearing away faster; he was working at it. Bit by bit, things began to come clear, Axel becoming well reacquainted with that view of the sky that had kept him so much company overnight...

But the direct light of the sun was blocked out by the figure bent over him, pulling away snow with hands alone. Face was still shadowed, but the sun above him had gotten caught in his hair, giving off this almost supernatural silvery glow...

"Axel?" he asked, sounding halfway between laughing and crying, "Oh my God, Axel..."

"You..." his words were unsteady, aching on the way out, "You bailed me out."

"What?" he asked, but the joke settled on him soon enough, and he bent over laughing, "I owed you."

"Nah, _I_ owed _you_ , that's why I broke you out in the first..."

"Shut up, man," and Riku threw his arms around Axel's by now largely uncovered upper half, which wasn't exactly comfortable, but not unwelcome.

"R-really..." Axel began, feeling tears on his face, "Good to see you, brother."

Riku didn't even lift his head from Axel's shoulder, where he could feel his own tears making contact with his skin, "Good to see you too."

* * *

The night passed fitfully, painfully. More than once, he would open his eyes, confronted with some confused, vivid, visceral dream. Navajo rugs on the Overlook, games of Hearts, Rinoa's smile as she dealt the Queen of Spades, trumping them all.

Crawling up the a slippery fire escape, through a cramped window, stumbling, almost falling, saved only by Seifer taking his hand in his.

" _Careful. He hears us, we're dead._ "

Didn't have to tell him twice.

Arguing with Rinoa in the pouring rain, telling her to stay, to forget it, forget _him_. Where did he get off, telling her a damn thing? Should've known better...

Should've done better.

Body on the stretcher, feather on her breast... A killer with no name, no face, just the feather.

Hades protects his own. Until it becomes inconvenient.

 _Two flown birds... catch one, kill the other._

As easy as that. A joke. A trap. Destined to fail. What did they care? They cared about nothing, not really.

Perhaps they knew the birds would kill each other first. More fun making it into a game, though, throw two other pieces on the board, stick little timers in them. Sure,why not? Who doesn't love a game of chance...

Squall let out a shallow cry, opening his eyes, feeling cold sweat dripping there. There was a muffled cuss, steps on the old wood, "You okay?"

He tried to nod, "F-fine..."

"No, no, dude you're not," he could feel Zack's hand on his brow, "Oh, shit."

"I'll...I'll be..."

"No, no, this isn't good. She should've been back by now, that...that _thing_ must've gotten her..."

"Zack..."

"Or, or that..." he trailed off, as if not sure how to describe it, "That big light, or whatever it was. The explosion. I knew I should've looked..."

"Zack..."

"I've gotta find her," he was getting to his feet, "Them. I've gotta..."

" _Zack!_ " He grabbed for the boy's arm, and he looked down at him, "I'll...be fine."

And he looked at him, "Do you mean 'fine', like you don't _mind_ the bullet in your chest, or 'fine' like you don't mind if it kills you?"

Squall might've reserved an exasperated sigh, if he wasn't convinced such an action would likely blow up one of his vital organs, "Tifa told you to stay here."

"But that was hours ago! Something must've happened to her..."

"I'm not saying nothing did. But she's trying to keep you safe, and..." he broke off, "Do you _know_ what she'll do to me if I let you run off?"

That, at least, got a tiny chuckle out of Zack, who sighed heavily, "You're not doing so hot, Squall."

"I've noticed."

"I...I mean, I...I can't just _sit_ here and watch you die! I can't do that, man. I mean, _you_ might be okay with it, but..." he got to his feet, "Sorry. I can't do it."

"Look, that's nice of you, but..."

Zack was already on his feet, pulling his letter jacket tight over his shoulders, "I'm just gonna take a look around, see what's up..."

"Wait, wait, Zack! _Zack_!" he tried to sit up, but was immediately hobbled, "Zack, you get right..."

But Zack was already on the stairs heading up, "There's a window on the landing. Figure I can drop down from there, no biggie. Don't want risk unblocking the door..."

"Smooth plan. How do you get back in?"

"Well, I do the knock, and then..." but he seemed to realize Squall was in no position to be moving furniture away from the door, "Listen, I'll be right back."

"Zack, come on..."

But he heard the window opening, a quick call, "Stay frosty, Squall!"

And he was gone. Squall heaved a giant sigh.

 _Can't even protect some happy-go-lucky kid. What the hell happened to you?_

Squall wasn't even sure there was a coherent answer to that one. That there _could_ be. Maybe he deserved nothing more than this. Lying alone, bleeding, shot, dying...

But Zack, Tifa, Yuffie,wherever the hell she was... Saix. None of them deserved any of what they'd gotten. No. If Squall had kept his course, if he'd _listened_ , if he'd resisted the impulse to just pursue every old shadow of his past, this could all have been avoided.

No Seifer, no Coliseum implosion, no Luxord, no _X_ , no black bird, nor yellow bird, either. Maybe he wouldn't have just _found_ those kids, Sora and Riku, but gotten them home too. Been a cop, done his job...

Gotten _somebody_ out of the Underworld, instead of becoming just another of its stooges. Just a different type of flown bird...

Footfall on the second floor. Squall lifted his head, gritting his teeth at the pain of even this little action. He almost called out for Zack, but realized in the next second, that this footfall was heavier. Whoever it was, they were wearing boots, and moving with considerably more deliberation than the flighty, fidgety Zack.

Squall tensed, hand going instinctively for the holster at his waist, before realizing it wasn't there. Of course not, Tifa and Zack must've taken it...

There. He could see his sidearm, just out of the corner of his eye, sitting on the windowsill above him. The footsteps were moving across the landing, to the stairs. If he could just reach the gun...

His fingers brushed the cracked plaster of the wall, the dusty wood of the sill... He could feel the grip of the gun, just at his fingertips...

A shadow fell over him. He heard, just barely, a short intake of breath. As if taken aback, but not shocked, not frightened, nor startled.

Squall closed his fingers around the grip of the gun and, though his arm felt weighed down by huge stones, made to lift it, turn almost onto his side, to face the figure on the stairs.

He was tall, lean, but muscular, clad in army boots, dark jeans, a grungy military jacket. There was a bag over his shoulder, a lumpy, shapeless canvas rucksack. Blue eyes studied him beneath an uneven crop of blond hair.

They remained frozen in place, he on the steps, Squall lying on the floor looking at him, both just staring, watching.

And then Squall's heart exploded, just as it had last night, when he'd caught that one, fleeting glimpse at the other bird, the black bird.

He dropped forward onto his hands, crying out as he never had in his life. He heard a clatter, saw his gun slide across the floor, presumably knocked off the sill as he'd thrashed.

A thousand little synapses seemed to be firing off in his brain, _He's here, he's here, he's here, the bird, her killer, your job,_ her _job, get him, kill him, before he can..._

He grabbed for his gun, lifted it, fired off a wild shot before he could think any more of it.

And _he_ , the yellow bird, Zack's brother, Rinoa's killer, Cloud Strife, ducked the shot, doing a practical combat roll across the floor...

Squall grabbed onto the windowsill with one hand, forcing himself to stand, though it took every ounce of energy he possessed...

A three foot machete was stuck into the floor right between his legs with such force that it shook wildly back and forth. Squall looked up from it, into Cloud's face, blank, expressionless, breathing heavily.

"Don't test me," Cloud told him, voice soft, even casual, "You're hurt."

"Oh..." Squall grunted, propping himself against the wall, "Wouldn't want to infringe on your standards."

And he brought the gun, hard, against the side of Cloud's head, sending him reeling back as he ducked past, lurching forward, aware of new, fresh blood coating the makeshift bandages around his midsection.

Feeling his legs give way beneath him, Squall reached out, grabbed for the nearest surface...the desk Tifa and Zack had moved to block the door, jostling a spindle-legged chair that had been placed on top of it...

Hearing movement behind him, Squall hastily grabbed the chair, hurling it from the desk... A smash, splintering wood... Cloud had preemptively swung the machete, sharp, jagged splinters flying everywhere...

Squall ducked, grabbed a severed chair leg, and, using it as a club, brought it down, hard, against Cloud's chest.

Cloud stumbled backward, the machete falling to the floor. He reached for it, but Squall anticipated this, moving to grab for it...

Only to feel his legs give way beneath him, the floor coming up under him, his fingers, limp and cold against the hilt of the blade.

He could feel a boot toeing at his back, pawing at him.

"Go...go ahead..." he forced the words out, "Kill a dying man. Whatever keeps the juices flowing, yeah?"

Cloud nudged him with his foot, swiftly turning him over onto his back, forcing Squall to look up at him.

The thought came to Squall with a frightening rapidity, _This is what Rinoa saw. In the Coliseum, after he'd worn her down. On the floor, can't get up... And he gets ready to end it once and for all..._

He lifted up the machete, forcing himself upright...

Cloud grabbed his arm, pinning him in place, the blade held out, sideways, between them. Squall refused to let go of the weapon, and the two of them remained that way, staring each other down, for another interminable stretch of time.

Finally, Cloud spoke, "My brother."

Squall wasn't even going to bother with surprise at this point, "Nice kid. He _really_ likes you."

"Where is he?"

"Wish I could tell you."

Cloud bore down on him, the edge of the machete coming a hair's breadth from Squall's neck, "Why the _hell_ did you bring him here?"

"Got your facts mixed up. Ours was a chance encounter."

Cloud's eyes widened only slightly, "He left you here?"

"Went to get help."

Cloud looked him over, and Squall was sure he was admiring the bloody mess he must be. Finally,he said, "Figures."

"Wha..."

Cloud manipulated the machete, the edge of the blade passing dangerously close down the length of Squall's front to the spot just above the bandages, where his _other_ scar was visible.

"Luxord loves his games, doesn't he?"

"You'd know more about games than me,"

"Bullet probably set it off, right? Gave you one, two shocks?"

"I haven't been tallying."

" _Think_ about it." the machete remained fixed over the center of the _X_.

"...7. Eight, since you showed up."

"And then there were five."

"I can do the math."

"What've you got to do? Kill me?"

"Take an educated guess."

Cloud looked back up into Squall's face, "What about _him_?"

"The Angel? I'm told you've got a contentious history..."

"He's no Angel."

"I've noticed," Squall grimaced, "You follow him here or is it the other way around?"

"Do you have to kill him?"

"Why? You have a vested interest in doing it yourself?"

There was an extended silence. Finally, Cloud pulled the machete back with such force that it was yanked out of Squall's hand. Before Squall could move to counter it, he'd brought the blade down...

And sliced cleanly through Squall's bandages, letting them fall to the floor, and exposing the ugly, raw, and rapidly crusting over bullet wound beneath.

Squall made to stand, but Cloud stayed him, holding the point of the blade inches from Squall's face, "Stay put. The more you move, the more the bullet moves."

"They teach gun safety in assassin school?"

"Hold still."

"Why, so you can cut the bullet out, like a Good Samaritan?"

Cloud blinked at him, "You want to die?"

"Do you want to kill me?"

At which point Cloud swung the machete through the air...

And let it go, so that it ended up squarely embedded in the wall across from them. He turned to his bag, began leafing through it.

"That bullet's gotta be two, three inches from Luxord's counter. One wrong move, the two meet, you don't want that to happen..." he turned back to Squall, holding in his hand a neat, short knife.

"Oh, no fucking..." he reeled back, but Cloud dropped to one knee in front of him.

"I'm taking the bullet out."

"Dare I ask if you've washed your hands?"

"Believe me, I could let you bleed to death here and now, but that's not helping either of us."

"Don't expect you to understand, but I've lost my taste for sidekicks..."

Cloud raised the knife, just away from Squall's neck, "I get this bullet out of you. You let me take care of your other problem."

"Problem?"

"Sephiroth," he let the name hang in the air for a second, "The Angel. Whatever the hell you want to call him. I get to kill him, and then you can do whatever the hell you want with me."

Squall looked at him, "What about your brother?"

"My _brother_ isn't a part of this."

"You're not afraid he'll miss you?"

Cloud's gaze hardened, "You want me to dig this bullet out of you or not?"

Squall could say nothing to that. So Cloud leaned back, going back into his bag.

 _The Angel isn't supposed to die_ , he found himself thinking wryly. He was actually surprised he hadn't gotten a little surprise from Luxord for appearing to go along with Cloud's little gambit. Maybe the technology was sensitive about what counted as transgressing on the bargain.

In any case, the Angel, Sephiroth, whatever, was in the wind now. And so was Tifa. Even Zack seemed a while coming back. But maybe that was just paranoia.

Zack...happy, eager to please kid. Good kid. Only wanted to do the right thing.

 _Hell is wrong with you? Making nice with that kid, and here you are now, thinking about killing his brother..._

Priorities. Hades, Luxord, Zack, Seifer, Sephiroth, Cloud, Rinoa... He had no shortage of priorities, they just needed ordering.

"Now hold still," Cloud was preparing a makeshift surgery around him, using things from his bag. Towels, thread, several knifes of various sizes, a pair of pliers, and a few tiny bottles of vodka to boot.

"Guess there's no question of taking out Luxord's ticker too, huh?" Squall asked dryly.

"One thing at a time."

"What, it's not possible, or you just won't do it?"

Cloud looked at him, "I even _poke_ that thing, there's gonna be a hell of a mess, and you won't be here to help me clean it."

Squall started back at once, but Cloud stopped him, pinning him in place, "I know what I'm doing."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Cloud considered for a moment, nodding slowly, "Smart guy."

And he punched Squall in the face, knocking him out at once.

* * *

"You know, on second thought, I'm not sure I like this idea."

"I thought you trusted me?"

"Well, yeah, but..."

But Axel clearly knew he'd been caught. He sighed heavily, "You sure you don't wanna switch?"

"Well, that depends, are you gonna gun the engine, or are you gonna try and pop a wheelie again?"

"Look, that was a mistake..."

"Yeah, and mistakes cost gas. Listen, Axel, I know what I'm doing," he allowed a smile, "I had a good teacher, remember?"

Axel smirked ruefully, "You're trying to butter me up."

"Weird when the shoe's on the other foot, right?"

Axel stuck out his tongue, but he took up his position on the kickstand of the bike, "What if this doesn't work?"

"It'll work."

"Gut instinct?"

"Physics, Ax," he wiped clear the light dusting of snow that had already collected on the seat of Axel's bike, swinging his legs over.

"You know I don't buy into that magic shit."

Saix glared at him, "Just hold tight."

"Roger," Axel dug his boots in, "Take me away, Moonboy."

Unable to hide a smile... _finally_ calling the shots in this friendship, who'd have thunk it?...Saix revved up, wet, slushy snow kicking up at either side.

"We good?" asked Axel, his words humming a little too close for comfort at his ear.

"We're about to be." revved up again. The bike shook beneath him.

"Are we sure there's nothing..."

"I can handle it," he turned to him, maybe more sharply than intended, "Okay? Just...have a little faith."

"I've got plenty of faith, man, it's just..."

He gunned the engine, too hard. The bike jolted forward, he pitched against the handlebars, there was a cry from behind him, a thud, a splat into the snow.

"Axel!"

Snow on his face as he whipped his head around, heavy, wet, weirdly gelatinous, almost like...

Licking.

Grunting softly, he opened his eyes, aware of a dull, throbbing pain in several places, a soft, morning light shining down on him from above and...

"Ach!"

There was a dog standing over him, huge, yellow and black, big black eyes, and currently completely engrossed in licking his face with abandon.

His face hurt too...really badly. He wasn't sure if the pain was dulled or enhanced by the canine tongue play. All he knew was that he didn't like the look of those big, yellow teeth bearing down on him in between every lick...

"Pluto!" a girl's voice, tiny, but authoritative. The dog, Pluto, stopped at once, lowered its head as if embarrassed, and moved off to curl up beneath a rickety metal staircase that went up...somewhere. Wincing, he looked around, the better to take in his surroundings. Grimy brick walls, lumpy plaster ceiling, concrete floor. The air was damp, smelled like a somewhat cleaner sewer.

"You're awake," the girl's voice again. He turned to the other end of the room, saw a pair of grimy winter boots, woolly gray leg warmers over thick jeans. An olive green canvas bag was dropped down by his feet.

"That's good,"

"W-where..." he tried to say, only to find his voice hoarse, barely audible.

"Shh, shh..." a hand clad in a thin, black glove, trimmed of the fingers, lifted a canteen to his lips, "Drink."

The water wasn't cold, but he drank it generously, feeling it dribble down his chin, onto his front. He lacked the capacity for caring.

Catching his breath, he took another look around, his attention settling on the dog, who was watching him warily, still looking put out.

The girl must've noticed, laughing softly, "Don't mind Pluto. I know he doesn't look it, but he's harmless. Just too nosy for his own good."

"Pluto..." he trailed off, looking around.

"That's what I call him. He seems to like it."

A sound of something being dragged across concrete caused him to turn back to the girl, who was moving a big barrel closer to the blanket he was spread out on. The blanket that, he now noticed, was stained in several places, red and splotchy. His sweater had been taken off too, leaving him in an undershirt that was also a bit bloody...but probably not as badly.

Memories crept into his head, rushing one upon the other. Vivi on the rooftop, his shooter, the woman whose name he'd never learned, standing calm and still, eye-to-eye with him from the church steeple across the square. Squall and Tifa down below, Squall trying to reason with him, pleading with him...

 _He knew, or he thought he knew. But he knew enough, didn't he?_

Love...he'd so rarely thought of all that baggage in terms of 'love'. Why should he? Nothing could come out of it one way or the other, it felt like he was just beleaguering the point.

But Squall had figured it out. And he had shot him.

And then he'd died. Or he thought he had, but he should know himself well enough by now to understand how often his earliest impressions were the wrong ones.

The girl lifted herself up onto the barrel, crossing her legs in front of her. There were words stenciled on the side of the cylinder, the ink faded with age, but still readable.

"Pistachio?"

"This is an ice cream parlor," she answered, "Or...it was."

She was wearing a black skullcap that hid her hair from view. Almond shaped brown eyes. She had a gentle face...he couldn't guess her age, but the face was definitely younger than the rest of her.

He nodded slowly, lifting his hand up to his face, but she reached forward, putting a staying hand on his wrist, "I wouldn't do that. The stitches are still pretty fresh."

He stared at her, "Stitches?"

She nodded, "You were cut. You don't remember?"

Flat, lifeless green eyes boring into his own. He shook his head, "I remember. I...I thought I was..." he stopped, "I _asked_ him to..."

He looked back at the girl, not wanting to finish that statement, "You helped me?"

"Pluto found you," she nodded, "We came into town, he started barking like a maniac, I thought we'd both be caught, but...there was nobody around. Well, except you. Bleeding pretty bad, but..."

"Wait... _nobody_?"

She shook her head, "Place is a ghost town."

"No, it...it is, but..." he frowned, "There _were_ people, before."

"You came with others?"

He thought of Larxene. They'd split up on the rooftops, he had no idea what had become of her. And then Squall, shot and bleeding on the ground, Tifa standing her ground against...whatever that thing was. Those kids, looking for their missing friend...

"They're gone," he said at last, not angrily, nor sadly, nor...anything. He was surprised himself at how flat the declaration was.

 _Left for dead...well, it's no more than you were expecting, is it?_

"You stitched me up?" he asked abruptly.

She nodded, "I know a thing or two about that kind of stuff. You were...you bleeding pretty badly, but the cut was actually pretty shallow. Didn't break the bone, and it missed your eye. Whoever was doing it either isn't that good with a knife..."

"It wasn't a knife."

She blinked, but he just shrugged, "I don't...I don't know what it was. Or _who_ he was."

"Well, whoever he was, he wasn't trying to kill you."

"That's...that's reassuring,"

 _I asked him to. I_ begged _..._

After everything, after Axel, Larxene, Yuffie, Squall...what point would there have been in pressing on, furthering the sham? He'd already given up so much, compromised so much of himself.

Perhaps it was just that begging that had saved his life. Why kill somebody who was _asking_ for it?

"There's going to be a scar."

He looked at her. She seemed apprehensive about that, as if unsure how he could take it. Saix only nodded, "Alright."

"Here," she started rummaging in that bag of hers. Pluto lifted his head at the noise, looking at her, tongue hanging out of his mouth.

She rolled her eyes, "Don't be greedy," but she still tossed him a biscuit, which he set to tearing up with gusto. She next produced a tiny mirror, which she handed to him uncertainly, "If...if you want to look..."

Did he? Even now the burn of it was fading, like a distant memory. But of course, things like this didn't _just_ fade away. They couldn't, they needed to be seen, to be remembered...

Tokens. Or brands, as the case may be.

He accepted the mirror from her.

His face was still red, flushed, especially in the middle, between his eyes, over the bridge of his nose, where the blade had cut in. A single diagonal scar, from just above his left eye to just beneath his right. She'd sewn it up with black thread, which only made the scar, itself a perfect line, surgically precise, so much more obvious.

"I...I did the best I could," she said, as if from a thousand miles away.

"'Let all things be done decently and in order'," he said at last, in a ghost of a voice.

"What?"

"It's...um...it's from Corinthians. My father used to say it all the time. Whenever I didn't make my bed just right, or if I made a mistake on a homework assignment...anything that wasn't perfect. He'd quote that to me. I...I don't even know what the actual line is referring to, he only ever used the one."

He indicated the scar in the mirror, "Screw symmetry, right?"

There was a short silence, before the girl laughed. Despite himself, he laughed with her.

"Thank you," he told her at length, "You helped me, and you had no reason to."

"Couldn't just let a guy bleed out on the side of the road," she said softly, "And, anyway..." she clapped her hand down onto her thigh, and the dog came running back over to them, sniffing first around her ankles, and then up and down the length of his body.

"...I don't think Pluto could've quit you."

He looked at the dog, who blinked back at him, tongue lolling from its mouth, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

"You're a cop?"

"What?" he turned back to her, sharply.

She reddened, "I only..." she reached over to a lump of fabric that Saix recognized as his blood matted sweater, producing his badge from its folds, "It was in your pocket."

"Does it matter if I am a cop?" he asked.

"What, like if I'm in trouble, or something?"

He didn't say anything to that. She only sighed, "Not in that kinda trouble." she handed the badge to him, and he accepted it, turning it around in his hand.

"I was," he said at last, " _Was_ a cop."

"And...now?"

He considered, and didn't have to think very long before admitting, "I'm not really sure."

She nodded, as if this made perfect sense. She was a weird kid. He didn't quite understand what to make of her.

"You're running away or something?"

"I guess you could say that. Though I don't know if anybody's gonna miss me." she didn't look that bothered as she said it.

"I don't think anybody's missing me either," he admitted at last.

There was another long silence. Pluto curled up into some impossible contortion and proceeded to lick his privates with abandon, producing an alarming slurping noise. The girl didn't seem to notice, just running her hands up and down her arms, looking off into the distance.

He turned to the bag on the floor. No markings, no design, no label. The only ornament was a tiny metal charm, a key chain maybe, fastened to the strap. Hard to tell in the limited light, but it looked to him like a seashell.

"You got a name?" he asked her eventually.

"Everybody's got a name," she answered enigmatically.

Maybe she was expecting him to give up his name first. He almost did, but then thought against it. Even if this girl wasn't likely to be on the up and up, he didn't like the idea of identifying himself as a wanted rogue cop.

A presumed dead, rogue cop, that is, he realized suddenly. As long as _some_ of the others in the square had gotten away... Well, no doubt they all believed him dead.

Maybe it _was_ better that way.

"I guess who I am doesn't really matter anymore," he said at last.

"That's a depressing way of looking at it."

"I've had a depressing week."

She chuckled, "Yeah...me too. But, hey, even if it doesn't matter who you _were_...there's always who you're gonna be. Can't really get away from that."

And Saix looked at her, long and hard, "No...I guess you can't."

* * *

 **A/N:** The number of new characters will begin to dramatically decrease, I promise. But there are still gonna be a couple to follow us into the last act. I _did_ say almost every character would be included, eventually. But as for _who_ Saix's rescuer is...

Well, you'll find out eventually.

Chapter 39 will be up next Friday!


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